It all started with a car accident that my mother was in while she was pregnant with me. My mom and dad were rear-ended that caused the seatbelt to tighten up on my mom’s stomach which inevitably tore her placenta. She was rushed to the hospital where I was born about a month before my due date. I was born a healthy baby, just smaller than the others in the nursery. 

Fast forward about seven or eight years my mom noticed that I started to walk a little differently that normal. It was nothing too serious, it started off with me just walking on my tippy toes. Then I started to fall, like a lot. Finally, it progressed into me walking hunched over and with a limp. My mom, a nurse, put her medical knowledge to use to try to figure what could possibly be going on with me but it was no use. She couldn’t figure out what the problem was so we did what any sane person would do and went to the doctor. My primary care physician looked at me, and he was just as lost as we were. 

Continue reading Living with a Disability Shaped Me – by Jasmyne White →

I never understood the significance of women empowerment until the lack of it inadvertently affected me. 

I was raised in a two-parent household, where all of the attention was devoted to me and my sister. My dad taught us how to treat others, he always treated my mother with respect and wanted nothing but the best for his daughters. He led by example and allowed us to express ourselves and our femininity freely, which as I’ve grown up, I’ve realized that most men don’t do. My mother was also an excellent parent, she was the breadwinner of the family, teaching my sister and I how to be independent and take care of ourselves. Like my father, she also wanted nothing but the best for us, and was always there when we needed her. 

Continue reading A Girl’s Experience – by Jana Pursley →

Once upon a time, in a beautiful garden, there existed blooms of all hues and sizes in blissful harmony. A group of flower friends soaked up the sun every day in their same patch of peaceful land. On this land lived Rosemary Rose, Donna Daisy, Fran Fern, Heather Hydrangea, and Lila Lavender. Their closeness and bond are what nurtured this patch of land and caught the attention of many ongoing spectators. Every day the flowers continued to grow and spread their seed among the patch of land.

Life was seemingly perfect, that is until one dark cloud gathered over the friend’s patch of land and later that day a storm blew through the peaceful garden causing chaos. In the midst of the storm, the group of flowers were ripped from their patch and strewn all over the landscape.

Continue reading The Diversity Garden – by Sammy Mckenzie →

Bella, my dear friend, I hope that you have been doing well since I last saw you. I really do appreciate you taking care of Mom in my brothers and I’s absence, but I cannot afford to get sick at this time. However, I plan to visit later this week to help take care of her and the house to ease your burden just a bit.

With her falling ill, I imagine that the task of preparing food has been designated to you in my absence. I have nothing short of absolute faith in your abilities, as you have helped taste test many dishes as well as provide your deft service of cleaning plates as my sous chef. With that said, Bella, given your current stature, I feel like I would be remised if I didn’t share my insights and advice to you, so that you may not have to carry this responsibility on your own.

Continue reading Letter to Bella about Pasta – by James Ortiz →

Sports have long provided a platform for diversity and tolerance. Jesse Owens, Bill Russell, and Jackie Robinson are examples of athletes who challenged the cultural norms and the prevalent prejudice at the time. There are countless examples of athletes over the years who have been prevalent in combating racism. 

Some people may question the significance of sports and its role in diversity. Some people may think that sports are just a game. But sports, like art or other media, can be studied over time and people can see the clear progression in things like racial diversity compared from the 1950s to the present. 

Continue reading Liverpool’s Egyptian King – by Carter Graham →

Have you ever thought about how you think differently than others? My story starts when I was little in a place called Tennessee. I was 2 or 3 years old at this time. At this stage of age, toddlers like me are supposed to talk or speak in little sentences. Well…according to my mom I didn’t exactly speak “normally” like the rest of my family. My mom, who’s a doctor, told me that I spoke in one or two syllable words. Sometimes if I was asked to repeat a word I would but I wouldn’t speak in clear sentences.

 Fast forward to when I turned 5, after my younger twin brothers were born, my parents (mostly my mom) would begin to notice how strange I acted at the time. I don’t know what exactly the details were, but my mother told me that I was quiet and liked to have fun with myself. My mom and dad thought back to when I was 3: I showed signs of having Aspergers or high-functioning autism. However, being the good parents they were, they didn’t want to assume it onto me early. Back to my 5^th year of age, they decided to get a check up on me; to their surprise, it turns out they were right. I did have high functioning autism.

Continue reading The Autistic Wanderer – by Alfred Bolden III →

Growing up in a rural Eastern Tennessee community, there was not a lot of diversity. It is a land inhabited by mainly Caucasian folks of Scot Irish descent, later known as hillbillies. Unlike most of the deep south, there are practically no black Americans in the communities of East Tennessee. Whereas most of the deep south has a large black population, this area has always been self-contained to mostly uneducated whites. The lack of education, along with little to no exposure to diversity sometimes leads to ignorance and hate. 

Thankfully, my family did their best to ensure my brother and I were as well traveled as we possibly could be with the resources we had. I soon realized that I was a lot more comfortable around people that didn’t look or act like me than most of my peers were. By the time high school came around, I realized that there was some real and alive racism all around me. It hurt me to my core. I couldn’t wait to move to a larger community with more like-minded people.

Continue reading Ignorance, microaggressions and racism – by Clark Gibson →

Saying that this topic is incredibly personal to me would be an understatement. Around the same time as the possibility of pursuing a Communication degree in college really cemented itself into my life, another important thing happened: I realized that the feelings around my gender are incredibly valid and that I was nonbinary. Finding a place for myself in the world of news and informative media remains incredibly important both to me and to the entire queer community at large, whatever their identities are.

However, it’s especially key to the nonbinary community (as well as the trans+ community at large, who intersect with the nonbinary community in many ways) that journalism’s coverage of them, their coming outs, and their experiences are accurate and respectful.

Continue reading Making Pronouns Unsurprising – by Lake Best →

While Tennessee does not have the most progressive history when it comes to legislation, it was not the proposal of the pride flag ban in schools that recently passed, but it was the vote that passed the legislation that shocked me. 

The vote that passed it was 70 to 24, and if that is any indication of the sentiment of the state population as a whole, it concerns me a little.

In a public school tucked in Chattanooga, TN, sat a girl in the cafeteria, surrounded by smells of various foods, as well as a wide range of diversity. As she finished the last crunchy bite of her carrots and ranch, she rushed to her phone to get on social media. This was the most exciting time of her life as she was preparing to graduate. On the hunt, the young girl and her friends scoured Instagram in search for the perfect photographer for their senior photos. Little did she know the importance photography would have on her life.

Continue reading Racial Representation on Social Media – by Stephanie Shannon →