February 19, 2006: Headlines: COS - Costa Rica: Segregation: African American Issues: Minority RPCVs: Chieftan: Costa Rica RPCV Professor Colette Carter wants to integrate CSU-Pueblo into the community
Peace Corps Online:
State:
Colorado:
February 8, 2005: Index: PCOL Exclusive: Colorado:
February 19, 2006: Headlines: COS - Costa Rica: Segregation: African American Issues: Minority RPCVs: Chieftan: Costa Rica RPCV Professor Colette Carter wants to integrate CSU-Pueblo into the community
Costa Rica RPCV Professor Colette Carter wants to integrate CSU-Pueblo into the community
In a cross-country trip to visit a sister in Richmond, Va., prior to her leaving with the Peace Corps, Carter said she experienced not being able to use public restrooms because of her skin color. She also was refused service at a bar in Oklahoma because of her ethnicity. "Here I'm off to the Peace Corps to save the world for the U.S. and I can't even use a damn bathroom," she said.
Costa Rica RPCV Professor Colette Carter wants to integrate CSU-Pueblo into the community
Professor wants to integrate CSU-Pueblo into the community
By GAYLE PEREZ
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
Colorado State University-Pueblo professor Colette Carter is a survivor.
At the age of 5, she dealt with the untimely death of her mother and subsequent move and separation from her father and three sisters.
She experienced segregation and later the desegregation of schools while growing up in San Antonio.
She tolerated mild discrimination in college, was one of the nation's first Peace Corps volunteers and was hired through the aggressive efforts of affirmative action.
She persisted through raising a son as a single parent, returning to college in her mid-40s to finish a doctoral degree and changing careers that have taken her from coast to coast.
But there is still one change that the political science professor hasn't yet realized, but hopes to do so before she ends her teaching career at CSU-Pueblo.
"One of the complaints that I have about CSU-Pueblo is that it is not a part of the Pueblo community," Carter, 64, said in a recent interview from her office. "We sit here on the hill not doing much for the community. That's one of the things that I want to rectify before I leave academia.
"I think I still have something that I can contribute through the university to help the community," she said. "What gives any meaning to my life is the extent in which I can give back."
Based on all that Carter has endured and accomplished during her life, that task may not be as far-fetched for her to realize as some may think.
Carter's tenacity, fiery spirit and go-get-'em attitude were evident early in life while growing up with a maternal uncle in a strict Catholic family in San Antonio.
"My mother had Irish in her so we grew up in strong Catholic family," said Carter, whose light skin-tone gives hint to her Irish ancestry.
Her uncle, who owned a machine shop, enrolled her in an all-black Catholic school, where Carter said she frequently ended up in the principal's office for fighting.
"The socioeconomics were so varied and, as a result, there were some pretty rough kids there that I ended up getting into a lot of fights."
After the 1954 Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. The (Topeka, Kan.) Board of Education, which led to the end of segregation in schools, Carter, then a fifth-grader, transferred to a previously segregated girls’ Catholic school. She later graduated in 1959 from a co-ed Catholic high school.
Carter said she experienced few race-related problems at either of the previously segregated schools.
"San Antonio was not the Deep South and it had a very different racial environment," she said. "Everything was segregated, but the level of hostility was low. I don't remember growing up seeing or hearing about any violent racial acts in San Antonio."
Carter said there were mild incidents of racial discrimination at school.
"It didn't bother us because we had our own social life outside of high school," she said.
After high school, Carter attended a junior college in San Antonio, then Prairie View A&M University, a historically black university. She earned a degree in sociology at Incarnate Word College.
It was at Incarnate Word that Carter said she "blossomed intellectually."
"That was when I first identified with the intellectual world," she said. "It was an all-girls school, so we didn't have the distractions of boys. During our breaks, we would sit around and discuss philosophies and theories." Carter graduated with a sociology degree.
Carter said after graduation, she volunteered for the Peace Corps after seeing President John Kennedy during a visit to San Antonio.
"I was a Kennedy kid and I thought, ‘I'm going to go out and save the world,’ ” she said of joining the Peace Corps.
Despite the sacrifice she made on behalf of her country, Carter said segregation still reared its ugly head.
In a cross-country trip to visit a sister in Richmond, Va., prior to her leaving with the Peace Corps, Carter said she experienced not being able to use public restrooms because of her skin color. She also was refused service at a bar in Oklahoma because of her ethnicity.
"Here I'm off to the Peace Corps to save the world for the U.S. and I can't even use a damn bathroom," she said.
After returning from a two-year stint in Costa Rica, Carter earned a master's degree from Catholic University and had her only child. She returned to school to begin a doctoral program and eventually landed a teaching job at the University of Washington.
But just prior to her being eligible for tenure, Carter was let go because she had not been published.
Carter said she was among several black professors that had been hired through the aggressive efforts of affirmative action, then placed on various committees as the 'token blacks’, only to later be denied tenure.
"We started dropping like flies," Carter said of her black colleagues. "We were so busy serving on the committees that we didn't have time to publish."
Carter left academia and went to work for the city of Seattle in the planning department. She eventually returned to school to earn a doctoral degree in political science.
"I had become more and more concerned with local development and political empowerment and that's what made me decide to go into political science."
Carter returned to teaching at Duke University and later was hired at CSU-Pueblo, where she plans to end her professional career.
"I like teaching and I like Pueblo. This is where I want to be at this point in my life," she said. "There's still some things that I would like to accomplish here. One of the reasons I came back into academia and political science is that I am committed to changing the world we work in. As a discipline, we don't do that and that's why I believe we have to get out and actively get involved in order to make a difference. I'm committed to doing that."
When this story was posted in February 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:
Peace Corps Online The Independent News Forum serving Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
| RPCV admits to abuse while in Peace Corps Timothy Ronald Obert has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a minor in Costa Rica while serving there as a Peace Corps volunteer. "The Peace Corps has a zero tolerance policy for misconduct that violates the law or standards of conduct established by the Peace Corps," said Peace Corps Director Gaddi H. Vasquez. Could inadequate screening have been partly to blame? Mr. Obert's resume, which he had submitted to the Peace Corps in support of his application to become a Peace Corps Volunteer, showed that he had repeatedly sought and obtained positions working with underprivileged children. Read what RPCVs have to say about this case. |
| Why blurring the lines puts PCVs in danger When the National Call to Service legislation was amended to include Peace Corps in December of 2002, this country had not yet invaded Iraq and was not in prolonged military engagement in the Middle East, as it is now. Read the story of how one volunteer spent three years in captivity from 1976 to 1980 as the hostage of a insurrection group in Colombia in Joanne Marie Roll's op-ed on why this legislation may put soldier/PCVs in the same kind of danger. Latest: Read the ongoing dialog on the subject. |
| PC establishes awards for top Volunteers Gaddi H. Vasquez has established the Kennedy Service Awards to honor the hard work and service of two current Peace Corps Volunteers, two returned Peace Corps Volunteers, and two Peace Corps staff members. The award to currently serving volunteers will be based on a demonstration of impact, sustainability, creativity, and catalytic effect. Submit your nominations by December 9. |
| Peace Corps at highest Census in 30 years Congratulations to the Peace Corps for the highest number of volunteers in 30 years with 7,810 volunteers serving in 71 posts across the globe. Of course, the President's proposal to double the Peace Corps to 15,000 volunteers made in his State of the Union Address in 2002 is now a long forgotten dream. With deficits in federal spending stretching far off into the future, any substantive increase in the number of volunteers will have to wait for new approaches to funding and for a new administration. Choose your candidate and start working for him or her now. |
| The Peace Corps Library Peace Corps Online is proud to announce that the Peace Corps Library is now available online. With over 30,000 index entries in 500 categories, this is the largest collection of Peace Corps related stories in the world. From Acting to Zucchini, you can find hundreds of stories about what RPCVs with your same interests or from your Country of Service are doing today. If you have a web site, support the "Peace Corps Library" and link to it today. |
| Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000 strong 170,000 is a very special number for the RPCV community - it's the number of Volunteers who have served in the Peace Corps since 1961. It's also a number that is very special to us because March is the first month since our founding in January, 2001 that our readership has exceeded 170,000. And while we know that not everyone who comes to this site is an RPCV, they are all "Friends of the Peace Corps." Thanks everybody for making PCOL your source of news for the Returned Volunteer community. |
Read the stories and leave your comments.
Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.
Story Source: Chieftan
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Costa Rica; Segregation; African American Issues; Minority RPCVs
PCOL25118
33