Interviewer (I):
Please recall some critical incident(s) in your personal life that facilitated your journey toward multiculturalism.
Thomas Parham (TP): Personal incidents in my life . . . I mean I've always had, I think, a kind of a fairly advanced social consciousness, even as a young child. I remember even some of my early essays back in grade school were about civil rights, Dr. King, you know, that kind of stuff . . . They were always important topics for me because they helped to frame really what my purpose and passion in life were, and so I have always come to my own studies with a desire to one day be in a helping profession somewhere. I believe it changed for me a little bit in college. What is also probably important to me is . . . family . . . You know, we come from a typical family, where I watched my mother, once separated from my dad, relocate with four kids by herself and engage in a monumental task to raise four kids by herself and do it well. That provides a tremendous source of inspiration, but also I watched her work for the government-she was a government worker for like 32, 33 years before she retired-and save time off for having children, basically with that system. But I watched her get passed over and discriminated against in ways that were profoundly unfair and her never say anything about that.
I: What position did she hold?
TP: She was a cost accountant essentially for the government, very good with numbers, figures, whatever, but they would bring in young, primarily White, male, college graduates that she would have to train to do their job and then promote them to positions they would never consider her for. It was just interesting; that's just the way the government works. So that piece had a profound impact on me. And then also I think growing up in, I grew up in Los Angeles. We were born in New York, grew up in LA. I think we relocated there just before my fourth birthday; I was about 3. But LA is a multicultural mecca. So, we lived in integrated neighborhoods. I spent some time in East LA-very heavily Latino and Mexican American; sometimes in South Central, which is predominantly Black; sometimes in the kind of central Pico, Wilshire district that is primarily integrated, more Jewish as you get up Wilshire Boulevard; the Crenshaw district, which is very Asian. I grew up with a cadre of friends who were very multicultural from the beginning, and so you developed a sense of respect and admiration for just other people's humanity, just because they work. So growing up in LA, I think made a big difference because I didn't see the world like in the Midwest or someplace else where stuff is very Black and