As I put on my new Ann Taylor blazer and gaze in the mirror the morning of my first ESOL department staff meeting, my mind runs through the departments’ instructors’ last names. I imagine all the White faces in the room and decide that I will fit right in, with my polka dot blazer and straight hair.

I arrive early to meet people in the department as they come in. I apprehensively pour my coffee and look around the empty room. I think about my blazer and hope it will be good enough. I pull up my jeans and wish that they didn’t reveal the curves that refused to be hidden in professional clothing. My hair is neat and straight rather than wildly wavy the way I prefer to wear it. I chose not to wear eyeliner. When I wear eyeliner, people always ask me questions like: “are you from Arabia?”

A faculty member walks in and I introduce myself. After the usual questions (What do you teach, What did you do before coming to work here), the conversation turns to my experience in a brown country and as a brown person. He asks if I speak Arabic, and I give him the answer I know he is looking for: Yes, I speak Arabic, and yes, I am a heritage speaker of Arab descent. He tells me that the department is lucky to have me, and as I begin to feel confident with my 5 years’ experience in TESOL, he goes on to explain that the department is lucky to have someone who understands their students’ language background and specific “issues.” I remember the chair of my department asking me months before, during a Skype interview, if I was a nonnative speaker, and I wonder now if this man assumes the same. Knowing that most students speak Chaldean as a first language, I remind him that I don’t speak Chaldean and that Arabic and Chaldean are different languages. His body language reveals that he thinks I am a know-it-all and that the difference doesn’t matter to him. Throughout the morning, at least three more White faculty members make similar comments.

Once everyone is seated and listening to an older White man lecture on grammar, I look around the room. I scan for color but am met with an overwhelming sea of White faces, with the exception of a few Asian faces. During another presentation, the presenter asks us, the audience, to be the “students.” He asks the class a question and when his question is met by silence, he “playfully” shouts, “Come on, Iraqis!” My eyes widen and heart rate speeds up—what? Did he refer to us, his mock students, as “Iraqis?” I’m sensitive to racial issues, so I stop to consider if I am overreacting. The comment elicited laughter from those around me, so maybe it’s fine. I look around me and find that everyone has moved on, not a single pause to think about why a community college professor just called his mock students by the majority ethnicity of students at the college. I imagine myself shouting, “Come on, Chinese!” to my UCSD students the previous semester. No. It doesn’t feel right, not in an academic setting, not ever. I take a deep breath and try to relax and move on. This is my first community college job and one of my first teaching positions since coming home from Peace Corps Service in Jordan. As a perpetual “stand taker,” I have learned that taking a stand can often have negative consequences, so this time I will silence the voice that insists that this feels wrong. Minutes later, we, the “students,” are given a group task. Before I turn around to find someone to work with, I hear faculty members, who in an effort to imitate their middle-eastern students, are “chatting” in incomprehensible guttural gibberish. It sounds like cartoon “Arabic”—or the “Arabic” gibberish that racists may shout at a woman wearing hijab. I look around and find that this bothers no one. So I ignore them silently and turn around to find my White partner to work with.

“There are no stupid questions, just stupid students,” a faculty member jokes as she encourages us to ask questions. All I hear is that we, the White majority, are superior keepers of knowledge and civilized customs. We know what is right and wrong, stupid and smart, worthy and unworthy—and in order to reach your goals, you must do it our way, the White way.

In the afternoon, an administrator presents on academic integrity, a sore issue for many ESOL instructors, according to the chatter that I overhear. The bitterness in the voices of faculty members indicates that they feel it is an especially big problem for middle-eastern students. The presenter tries to explain why students “get help” rather than doing their own work. She tries to convey the importance of community within the Iraqi population and the impact of their collectivist culture on their attitudes towards plagiarism and cheating. She shares that students often have friends from church do their work or “help” them with essays. This shocks many faculty members. “How can they use church that way?!” The shock and anger spreads like wildfire and faculty members snicker for a bit. While discussing ideas to address the problem, one faculty member stands up and says, dripping with condescension, “We’re not in Saudi Arabia, we can’t cut their hands off for cheating!” While everyone laughs, I struggle to remain composed and pick my jaw up from the floor.

As I listen to other presentations, I feel the distance between me and my colleagues widen. Their skin becomes Whiter, their minds and hips more narrow. I replay in my head some of the comments made until that moment, hoping that someone else might have felt uncomfortable. But as I look around at all the White, smiling faces, I know my hope is false.

* * *

About a week later, after discussing the issue with a couple of colleagues at another college, I decided to talk to the chair of my department about the way I felt at the meeting. I had decided that even if she was not receptive, at least she might experience a shift in awareness. She was surprised and could not think of anything offensive that was said during the meeting. She agreed to my suggestion that cultural competency training might benefit the department, and I agreed to organize it. However, due to a scheduling conflict, I could not accept the course they offered me for the following semester, and they could not offer me a different course. So, because I was no longer a member of their department, I was not a part of putting together the professional development training in the spring, and they did not include the training that I suggested. In the end, I fear that a 2-hour training organized by the one Arab faculty member may not have yielded significant shifts in attitudes, anyway, but rather may have increased the “us” and “them” divide. Despite my Ann Taylor blazer and straight hair, I feel pretty sure I would have landed squarely with “them.”

Mona Alsoraimi-Espiritu is currently an adjunct English and ESOL instructor in San Diego at four different local community colleges. She studied English at San Diego State University and received her MA in Applied Linguistics from Georgia State University. Mona has served as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer twice, first in Mongolia and most recently in Jordan.