The virtue and the strength of UWC is that it provides small, but powerful cells of innovation, catalysts for change, breaking barriers of habit and opening broader vistas of experience for both pupils and educationalists.
When I went to school, I didn't know a lick of English, but it was okay because there were so many immigrants in the area, a lot of the kids didn't speak a lick of English, either. It was normal to have a wicked accent.
The students at Yale came from all different backgrounds and all parts of the country. Within months, I knew many of them.
I grew up all around the Bay, but I spent most of my time in Hayward and I loved it. It was a really big apartment community, there was a whole bunch of kids.
I grew up in the Middle East. My folks have a very thick, kind of Oklahoma accent; that's where I was born. But we moved to the Middle East right after I was born, so I guess we were surrounded by English people and French people.
New York, it's people. It's grit. It's diversity of people. It's diversity of industry. In L.A. everyone's looking over their shoulder because one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills just walked in. They value the wrong things.
But in New York, it’s different—even uptown it’s really grand, and there’s no real segregation there. It’s all mixed up.
I think it's pretty dynamic. There's a lot of energy there and life, and you'll have women dressed in their traditional African dress when they come, and you have people from all over the place, and some people have headphones on because they're listening in Spanish.
I had great relationship with the Hispanic - we had a lot of Hispanics in the school actually from different countries, Venezuela, from Brazil, and they all played soccer, and I was on the soccer team, and I developed great relationships with them.
My neighborhood was a great neighborhood; it was filled with all sorts of ethnic groups and things. So I grew up thinking I was a human being.
Being in a multicultural environment in childhood is going to give you intuition, reflexes and instincts. You may acquire basic responsiveness later on, but it's never going to be as spontaneous as when you have been bathing in this environment during childhood.
The beautiful thing about having grown up in Brooklyn is, because of the rich cultural and racial diversity there, no one seemed to give too much thought to where I fit on the racial spectrum. But there were times when I would run up against someone who was interested in figuring out what race was. That would come as a surprise, and in some cases, like a slap in the face.
Britain is an open and tolerant country.
I grew up in an environment in Birmingham that was really multicultural, with black kids, Irish kids, Indian kids.
New York is so diverse. When you're on the street or in the subway, you're experiencing more of the diversity of New York.
I have three championships in a country where I don't speak the language.
