Kalani Cannon, a recent University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduate, says she believes her generation will call out racial discrimination. UTC photo by Angela Foster.In some of her University of Tennessee at Chattanooga classes, Kalani Cannon, 22, was the only non-white student.
When the topic of diversity came up in her classes, Cannon sometimes noticed students glancing her way, as if to invite her to step into the center of the discussion.
For the Georgia-born, Hawaian-named, California-raised daughter of a Filipino immigrant, Cannon found the attention odd, as if she were being pressed to fill a role.
It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable conversing about race and ethnicity – in fact she is extremely thoughtful on those topics – but as an Asian-American with Pacific Island heritage she had never personally felt the sting of prejudice.
Then, in the past year, things changed. The March shootings of Asian massage-business workers in Atlanta, coupled with reports of random physical attacks on Asian-presenting people in big cities around America, gave Cannon a lot to think about.