Giving Compass' Take:

• Originally coming from Lagos, Nigeria, Oluseyi Olaose writes about the discrimination she faced in school and how she overcame it by joining speech and debate. Her story is told on The 74.

• What can nonprofits do to make sure young immigrants are welcomed to this country, not persecuted for their differences? How can we foster more tolerance in our schools?

• Learn the importance of helping students transition to new schools.

Five years ago, I migrated to the United States. In one hand, I dragged the entirety of my 12 years in a suitcase; the other held my mother’s tight grip. The middle school I attended looked nothing like the cracked, decaying walls of the secondary school I attended back home in Lagos, Nigeria. To my classmates, I soon became the African girl with the weird name, so I shortened it. The abandonment of my native name was only the first symptom of the acute shame of my blackness that accompanied my arrival in America.

I had abandoned my black self — but through my participation in high school speech and debate, I got her back. It is a platform for voicing the narratives of the voiceless, and with the constant flow of xenophobic legislation from the Trump administration, it is imperative that we people of color allow our voices to become projections of the silenced minority.

I didn’t come to this realization quickly. When I entered high school, I consumed every poisonous narrative I was fed until I became my own biggest enemy. Not only did I breed a deep hatred for the skin I was in, but I grew to hate my classmates and anyone who looked like me.

Read the full article about how speech and debate empowered an immigrant student by Oluseyi Olaose at The 74.