I am a graduate student at the University of Southern California. I am of Latin American descent; I  grew up, and live in East Los Angeles. From what I knew of white people when growing up is that they lived far, and my mom cleaned their homes.

As I got older, I came to understand the circumstances of my presence in the United States. There was a war back home in El Salvador, my mother, who held a Bachelors degree in Business Administration fled to this country, and was reduced to this work. It was fine work—honest, decent, but at the expense of so much more.

For the most part, I have lived my life in safe zones, interacting with white people from a distance. Not because they were scary to me, but because most just didn’t “get it.”

Now that I am at USC, at the Annenberg School of Journalism, I hear a fair amount of talk on the role of journalists who covers stories that are nitty gritty, the stories of marginalized, low income, communities of color. A community that surrounds USC, yet is absent from the campus. The school—at $18,000 a semester—definitely draws an upper-class student body, earning it the nickname, University of Spoiled Children.

In a recent roundtable discussion, a few professors noted that student journalists need to be comfortable in going into the community and talking to folks. To this I ask, which journalists?

The students in this mid-city academic institution who grew up in the surrounding neighborhood—South Central, ground zero for the Rodney King riots—aren’t uncomfortable. The problem is that their (our) voices aren’t as loud.

While white students feel uncomfortable around people of color what about the students of color who are surrounded by white people?

A tall bald white male student spoke about his experience in South LA, and how he, for the first time, felt like a minority.

The issue of cultural and ethnic sensitivity comes to mind. The stories of economic plight, the stories of people overcoming, the story of the former gang member who got his/her life together, these are not stories where white journalists become “white saviors” because they were able to put some ink to it.

These are stories of real people, that occur every single day, and it takes journalists, who regardless of race or ethnicity have an innate ability to understand the complexity of the human condition.

As one of a few Latinas at Annenberg who comes from an urban setting with a mix of street and academic knowledge, I always find myself contemplating these thoughts. All the time.

I love USC and my program and I have wanted to be a Trojan all my life. But, it’s moments like these that really solidify my presence, my viewpoint, and my understanding towards how stories should be covered, and the importance of community journalism.

We are not all blessed with having grown up in beautiful East or South LA. We are not all blessed with understanding concepts like intersectionality or outsider looking in perspectives, but I hope, that we can at least try to share our stories, without feeling like we just saved someone.