The Afro-American Experience: October 21

Family Studies junior Deanna Tompkins came to UNM from Denver on a Daniels Scholarship, which she said is hard to get.
She works in African-American Student Services (the Afro) and mentors girls by building their spirits and teaching them how to set goals and put community events together. She said the Afro feels like a home away from home.

“I don’t have any family here. I just have myself and whatever friends I’ve acquired along the way,” she said.
Tompkins has been in the foster care system since she was 8 years old, but now she’s movin’ and groovin’ to the song of her own independence.

It’s where she gets her passion for social work.

Daily Lobo: That must feel good to be out of that.

Deanna Tompkins: It does feel good because there are stereotypes. Foster kids are stigmatized as having a mental disorder or emotional issues. There’s always a stigma that follows a foster kid. And you can kind of correlate this to being African-American. If you’re in a situation where the odds are already against you, it’s up to the individual to decide if they’re going to live up to those negative stereotypes or if they’re going to do something different. That’s why I don’t really search for issues, because I’m not going to live up to a stigma. I’m not poor. I’m not uneducated. I’m not struggling because I choose not to be any of those things. I don’t want to be stigmatized as being an African-American that has negative stereotypes with her. Same with being a foster kid. I don’t want to live off of the government. And being Hispanic — my father is an immigrant. I can be stigmatized for that, too.

DL: You’ve got all sorts of stigmas you could use.

DT: If I want to constantly be upset because there’s some kind of racial or foster care or any kind of issue, then I can do that. But I don’t. … It’s kind of pointless; it’s like a downer. There are more things that you can be looking forward to.

DL: How much of it do you think is in their minds, and how much of it do you think is people’s outside hostility? There are people who say people are hostile toward them because of their skin color. And maybe some people feel this way and others don’t. Not to discount that there are real problems, but I’m just saying, when you go looking for problems …

DT: How much of it is really there? Yeah, I think I’m following what you’re saying.
Yeah, I feel like, depending on the person, there have been different scenarios and different situations, but me personally, I’m 50 percent African-American. The other half is Mexican. But my physical appearance, I look African-American. I personally have not had anything school-related happen to me being in New Mexico based off of my race. There have been things on campus with a student calling me and my group of friends the N-word or being down the street at Wendy’s and people just driving by and pointing out the fact that we’re African-American in some negative way. There are some people on campus, I don’t want to say that they go searching for issues that are race related, but if there’s the hint of one, they jump on it quickly. And I don’t want this to come off bad, but I don’t think that sometimes it’s necessary.

She said people today have equal playing fields to do whatever they put their minds to and that society is not out to get African-American people and prevent them from succeeding.

“I just don’t think that way at all whatsoever,” Tompkins said. “And I don’t think in the feminist way where I feel like they’re trying to prevent women from succeeding. Maybe I’m just too optimistic and too open-minded. … What I just said goes against a lot of people’s beliefs and opinions on this campus, and this might even be controversial if it gets published and people take it the wrong way, but I just personally don’t feel that way.”

She said she wants everybody to know they can use the Afro when they need academic advising and counseling, a place to study, eat lunch, watch TV, get tutoring or socialize. All she asks is that you sign in so the University has a record of how many people use the space. High student participation, in turn, helps the Afro get more funding, which was cut in half this year, she said.