Guest Contributor

Growing up in a family of New Orleans transplants in L.A.'s Jefferson Park neighborhood, Jervey Tervalon wasn't always appreciated by educators. It took some special teachers to take a deeper look and recognize his talents.

A racial slur was part of Omar Amr's first experience playing Division I water polo at UC Irvine. It wasn't the first time he'd heard racist comments. Growing up in East L.A., Amr was groomed to "behave appropriately" so that hate directed toward him would not turn into harm.

When he tuned in to a radio interview with a top law enforcement official, and the topic of racism came up, Keith Taylor was hoping to hear some sympathy for Black people killed by police. Or perhaps, "some idea of how to work in earnest to combat this pervasive issue." What he heard instead brought back painful memories from many years back.

Growing up in the mostly white Orange County suburbs, she felt safer staying quiet, keeping her feelings to herself whenever stung by subtle or overt racism. But over time, she found her voice.

"Things that violate the racial rules in L.A. -- like everywhere else -- are real. And you shouldn't fall into the trap of minimizing them because they're exceptions or simplifying them to satisfy the rules."

She'd been hired over the phone. All was well until she came in, and her new employer saw she was Black. Here's how having one door closed in her face put her on the path toward a lifetime of kicking other doors down.

I began writing this illustrated letter as a way to shed my fear of the person who racially insulted my children. By the end, I remembered that racists are the ones who are truly afraid.

She and her husband grew up in a neighborhood where they and their peers, as children of Mexican immigrants, were the ones profiled by white LAPD officers. His response was to join the force, to represent his community. Now, decades later with two grown daughters, they find themselves navigating some difficult conversations.

Brandi Tanille Carter apprehensively left her home Los Angeles to go to a college she had never seen in a state she'd never visited. But it's here she learned to embrace her Blackness, and it's this experience which allowed her to return home to L.A. empowered.

My interactions with race -- as is the case for my students -- are valuable, and I'm reminded that they require serious reflection and mindful application. Not only in my personal experience in Los Angeles as a Korean American and an immigrant, but in relation to other minority groups; after all, it is a shared history.

Earlier than expected, my wife and I had to give my 6-year-old son "the talk" about what it means to be Black in America. Except I'm neither Black nor American.

The late bishop actively protected child rapists during his 23-year career in Orange County.