Finding Me

by Viola Davis

There was no cognitive understanding of the real complexity of race at the school or in its admissions process. How do you excel when you’re Southeast Asian, highly intelligent, hardworking but spent two years in a Cambodian jungle, two years in a refugee camp, and watched your family being massacred before coming to the country? Without the Preparatory Enrollment Program, there would have been zero students of color because we were starting with major deficits. Most destructive was the view that we weren’t worthy. It is the foundation built into the DNA of America, and when you couple it with personal challenges like poverty, violence, trauma, and compromised communities, it can become a death knell. Years later, Frank Sanchez was appointed president and totally transformed the demographics of the school.