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Growing up in the Bay Area, I was not viscerally aware of my experience as a minority. My parents, like many other Black folks, made sure of this. When I was growing up there were Black people everywhere from what I could tell. My parents patronized Black-owned businesses throughout Oakland and Berkeley. I had Black teachers and Black doctors; my parents had a Black accountant; our grocery clerks, bus drivers, bank tellers, and local artists and performers–they were all Black, of African descent, and proud of it. It was the 1970s-80s. Perhaps I should have been paying more attention because the reality was that I was one of three Black girls in orchestra in 1985 (the other two have white mothers); one of two Black girls in college prep English in 1990 (go Yellow Jackets!); the only Black person in my Business Law course in 1995; and the first Black director in a Berkeley-based nonprofit in 2014.