I am very white.

I grew up in rural Upstate New York. Everyone I went to school from K-12 was white, with the exception of two African American families and a Cambodian family. I went to college in Upstate New York, where University of Rochester had a mathematical proportion that equated to diversity, but still, most of my friends were white, and with that, also from Upstate New York. I lived and studied in England for a while, and although I was technically a foreigner, my English/Irish heritage made me fit right in. With the exception of white Nikes and an accent that butchered the Queen's language, no one looked at me any differently. I have always been in the majority.

But not in Salinas, CA. At school, there are about 600 kids. Two out of these 600 are white. Also, I can count the number of white staff members on one hand, including myself.

Even though white is in the minority here, Salinas is far from diverse. The other 598 kids at the school are Mexican/Hispanic. There are no African American kids. There is one Asian staff member. Nationally, Hispanic people are a minority group, but here they are the reigning majority. The kids know as little about diversity as I did growing up. I'm getting a sense of what the minority groups felt like in Upstate New York.

For one, you get a lot of stares.

Besides for that, I've been called Miss Barbie before--probably for my blond hair and blue eyes. I've had to explain what freckles are and how they come to be. Little girls look at my blue eyes and tell me they want them. Students often ask me if myself and the other AmeriCorps member with blond hair and blue eyes are "brothers" (they don't know the word "siblings" or "related" yet).

Do I feel discriminated against? No. I think the language barrier is a much bigger segregating factor than skin color for me. The comments about my race come from a place of honest childhood curiosity.

On the flip side, if I were Asian, I doubt the kids would be so kind. I've heard countless taunts from the kids about "the Chinese," as they call them. They pull their eyes into slits and fake speaking in Chinese.

What's funny is, I remember watching little white kids stereotype Asian people the same way when I was growing up.

I guess the kids do stereotype me, too, but stereotypes of being white--as these kids know them to be--are advantageous. They ask me if I have a lot of money, or if I have a big house: things they associate with white people. They say they wish they were born in New York too, as opposed to Mexico or even Salinas.

Probably the hardest one for me of all: they ask me to take them back to New York with me when I go.