What Is It Like to Be a Black Dietetics Student?

Microaggressions, paternalism & the fatigue of being the only one speaking out.

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

Last month I wrote about a study that found over half of Black participants decided to stop their dietetics journey before applying for a dietetic internship, compared to about 10 percent of white participants. Why? Shouldn’t we be centering the voices and experiences of Black nutrition students, interns and RDs to figure out what is broken in this system? (You can catch up, and learn about all the inequities in the path to becoming an RD, with the linked post below.)

Diversifying Dietetics Is Going to Require White-Lady Discomfort

A dietetic intern reached out after seeing the post, and said she wanted to share her story about being one of the few Black students in a well-known, well-respected nutrition program, located in a large, racially diverse city in the Northeast. It is just one story, but I believe many Black students, interns, and RDs—as well as other BIPOC folks—will identify with her experience.

The good news: it has a happy ending. But her happy ending is also our happy ending, because I think she is going to be an incredible dietitian. The world needs more RDs like her. And maybe if we listen and learn from stories like these, if we get uncomfortable and push for real change, we will.

I’m letting her words speak for themselves, but not including her name, in order to avoid potential professional reprisal. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, and for length—I wasn’t able to keep every story she told me. There are more.

Thanks to my paid subscribers, I was able to compensate her for the time she spent speaking with me. If you would like to contribute to her journey to becoming an RD, I’ve included her Cash App info at the end.

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“I Really Wanted to Help People”

I became interested in becoming an RD because nutrition and food were always something that I was thinking about, because from a really young age, I was dealing with insulin resistance and prediabetes. From about 10 years old, thinking about what I'm eating and what I'm doing. And I, as an adult, came to a point where I was just like, there has to be a better way. There has to be a way where I'm honoring my body, and I have a good relationship with food. 

I grew up with a mother who is a chronic dieter, and I was like, that cannot be me. I cannot be 60 years old, still thinking about losing ten pounds or eating low carb. I saw the writing on the wall, and I just wanted to be part of the change. I didn't know exactly how I wanted to do that, but when I discovered, oh, there's registered dietitians. There's somebody who is like a nutrition expert, and you can go to school for that.

So I decided I want to do that. I also was very interested, because I knew that the field was growing, and it was a career where there were lots of options. And my thought was, I want something that feels kind of evergreen, where there's always going to be some opportunities, and there's a vast amount of them. I've been historically more of a creative. And I was like, I want to get a professional degree that leads to a credential, and these jobs, not just nebulous, you know?

So really it was me wanting to support others in their journey towards improving their relationship with food and their body. Diabetes runs in my family on both sides, and I really wanted to help people in both management and prevention, because so much of this can be prevented, but do it in a way that is culturally affirming, and also accessible.

I noticed that a lot of my classmates come from a certain type of socioeconomic background. So thinking about accessibility, how do you purchase healthy foods on a limited budget? How do you make healthy items when maybe you don't have a full kitchen? All those things I'm super interested in. But some people may not be thinking about it when they're thinking about going into the field.

I have lived experience. I've been food insecure. I have the lived experience of having limited selections, limited funds, and what that means when you're going grocery shopping. But a lot of [nutrition] programs have a reputation of having really affluent students that come through. You have to have a lot of resources to get through all of it—to do a whole nutrition degree, or do the DPD.¹ And now they have the masters [degree] part. You have to get the masters before [the internship], also having that nine months to a year where you can't work, and then going into a field where some of the positions—especially when you're thinking about community or clinical—they're not paid very well.

So yeah, who's gonna be able to take that leap and kind of land softly?

“There Wasn’t Really Much Support”

It's been really interesting, but also frustrating. I almost feel like I had to…it's not trail blazing. But I had to motivate myself, because there wasn't anyone around. In the program I didn't really have mentors until recently. All of the tenured faculty, I feel like they're just kind of sitting pretty with their tenure. It's been adjunct instructors who have been the most helpful to me, and actually professors from other programs that are in the department who have been the most supportive.

There wasn't really much support for applying to internships. There was maybe one session. But there weren't a lot of resources, and I know, at other schools, when you know [which internship you matched with] they want to know if you got in, and kind of celebrate. There was nothing. No one asked me. I had to sort of hype myself up, because I know that the match process is a big deal, so I had to make a big deal for myself. But no one from the program did.

I really never had people from the program reaching out to me to ask me where I was in the program, and what I was doing. Did I need help? Did I need support? Because I absolutely did. There were times where I I took breaks because things happened, family stuff happening. Having financial issues with affording tuition and things like that, and I was just kind of on the roster. No one on the program was like, Hey, you haven't registered for class in a couple of semesters. Is everything okay? Do you plan on finishing? Is there something we can help you with? Is there something we can steer you towards in terms of resources? Nothing. 

“The Professor Didn’t Say Anything”

I've never heard them talk about diversity in the program, even though it's something that is maybe superficially talked about in the field. But I've never even heard a conversation like, This is an issue. We need to find more ways to recruit diverse candidates and make it a welcoming space for them. I've had to sit through microaggressions that other students have said, and the professor didn't say anything about it.

Things like saying that children from the neighborhood where I lived didn't know what a banana was. I was like, Bananas are in the bodega, though! It's not like a kumquat or other fruit that they may not see in their local store. I'm like, Bananas? Okay, I think you're being hyperbolic, and I don't like it. It sounds racist. I raised my hand and said something, but the professor didn't say anything.

There is a kind of fatigue, you know. Always having to be the person who is disrupting racially insensitive commentary. 

I had a friendly acquaintance in the program who was Black as well, and she was saying that one of her classmates, a white woman, had basically complained that she had brought hummus and carrot sticks to a community center in a historically African American neighborhood, and nobody wanted to eat it. And her comment was: "Oh, I guess they just love their fried chicken."

Well, maybe it's that carrots with hummus is very foreign to them. And yeah, it didn't look very good to them, because that's not something that is familiar. She didn't even try to start with a gateway entry food that's familiar. Like, let's try a black-eye pea dip, or something that is more familiar. There are Black people who eat garbanzo beans, yes. Is it culturally traditional to us? No! So that was the attitude. My classmates just wanted to go get their community time, so that they could put it on their application for the internship to say, I volunteered at this community center, and I did my due diligence or whatever.

I took semesters off because I had moments where I felt like I couldn't do it, and I felt like, Well, what am I even doing this for? I'm going to get to the point where I'm done with my courses, and then I'm going to have to do the internship. But how am I really going to do it? I just went through these phases where I thought, Well, I don't know why I'm working so hard towards this, because it seems like a huge obstacle, and I didn't want to go into debt. I mean, I did end up taking out student loans because I felt like, Okay. Let me just do it. Let me bite the bullet. I guess I'll figure it out on the other side of it. But it was very daunting thinking about taking out loans in order to pay for the tuition, and live. It took a little longer for me to finish the program because of all the starts and stops, and not being sure I was going to finish.

“So He Was Blaming Me”

When it was time for me to apply for the internship I had to meet with the DPD director. When he found out how long it had taken me, he didn't ask me what was going on, like, it took you a little longer than normally we recommend. He just lambasted me and asked me, "Well, what were you doing?" And "Your former advisor? He knew he gave you bad advice." He was saying that there was a class that I took that shouldn't count towards the DPD. Also there was an accounting course that he was saying wasn't going to count. 

I said, "But the new advisor never said anything to me about that." So he was blaming me.

I was almost in tears, because what should I do? At this point I'm like, "Well, what is the solution? Whatever happened, happened. If I was misinformed, okay, but does it mean I need to take another class? Does it mean I need to postpone when I'm going to apply?" I just wanted some support and affirmation on how I could move forward. 

But he was dwelling so much on the fact that I took too long, and I wasn't supposed to do this. I wasn't supposed to do that, and he's like, "You know you're an anomaly."

And then he asked me, "Do you know what 'anomaly' means?"

And that's when I was like, Oh, no.

Something is really wrong here, because—the way he's talking to me. He's being very patronizing. Very paternalistic. I was like, okay, I shouldn't ever talk to him. The thing was, some of the [internship] programs require your DPD director to write you a letter. I got off the phone with him. And I realized, okay. Well, I'm not going to get a letter from him. Because he said, "Well, I could try to write something," and I was immediately like, "No, I'll find somebody else to write a letter for me." So I found other people to write letters for me, and clearly it worked because I got into my internship.

But I thought: I can't be the only one who had this poor experience with him, and so I had documented everything, and I called one of my co-worker friends, and cried to her. I cried to my mentor who's an adjunct at school, and she asked, "Are you going to report him?" I said, "I don't know." I wanted to put my energy into my internship application and just moving forward and being successful. I didn't want to put any more energy into that situation.

I guess other students had complained about him, but they didn't want to officially report because they didn't want reprisal, so he's been able to just do whatever. But I felt like my best "revenge," which is not really revenge, is just to get my RD, and have my career, and do well. And also find ways to bring other people with me who are going to be diverse voices coming from different backgrounds, different cultures, different religions. Help to be the change. Because I feel like it will probably be a waste of my time and energy to try to tell someone why they were wrong, and how they treated me, when it seems like they're not very self aware. I'd rather focus on: how can I be a voice to help other people feel more welcome in the profession in the future? How can I make more spaces that are affirming? That's what I'm focused on. 

I also know just me existing in the space, me making it this far and being able to go do the RD exam this summer and go into my career—that helps open up doors for other people who felt like maybe it wasn't possible. So I just wanted to focus on that, because yeah. It was just too much.

“I Knew I Had Potential”

Not only did I match to my first choice [internship], I also had another internship director immediately email me after the match to ask if I got matched. She had two other slots that were available to me if I needed them. I felt very empowered because I knew I was a good candidate, despite life happening to me. I knew my grades were good. I knew I had potential. I knew if there was new stuff I needed to learn, I knew I could learn it. 

I'm in this program and I'm just having such a great experience. The internship director loves me. She was like, "I'm so glad you're here." My classmates love me. I get along with them so well. It's such a diverse class. They told me, "I'm so glad you're here," when I talked to them about some of the things that happened to me. How it discouraged me, and I wasn't sure I wanted to go forward in the profession.

It's been a wild ride for me, and it's been frustrating. My mentor says I'm very resilient, which I'm like, "I don't want to be resilient anymore!"

I just want to show up and do my work, and not have to feel like I'm pushing up against stone so much. Neil Degrasse Tyson was saying—because I guess he had a very non-affirming experience in his astrophysics PhD program—he said he felt like he took the path of most resistance. I feel very passionate about nutrition, but I feel like there were other fields that I could have gone into, where I would have had way more support. And I chose to take the path of—maybe not most resistance, I'm sure there's other things that would have been maybe more challenging—but there was a lot of resistance.

But every time I would take a little break from my classes because I'd get frustrated, and I'd feel like, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm just going to have a regular job and get paid and not worry about this. But then I would sit in class. I would listen to certain conversations. I would observe who was in their internship, or who finished, and I was like: I feel like I can do this. When we would have conversations in class, and the work, and how I engaged in it, I knew that I had a lot of value to add. I just felt pushed to continue.

I'm about to start my acute care clinical rotation on Monday, and—fingers crossed, knock on wood—I finish the internship at the end of April. Despite the journey not being as smooth as I wanted it to be, or linear, I'm here. I'm doing it.

If you would like to support this intern through her nine-month, unpaid dietetic internship and journey to become a dietitian, feel free to donate to her directly though her Cash App account: $BelleAngele9.

1. DPD stands for “Didactic Program in Dietetics” and is the educational component of one path for becoming an RD. After completing a DPD program, you can apply for a dietetic internship.