There’s a line in the film Black Girl in Suburbia that filmmaker Melissa Lowery ’09 has committed to changing.

In her first-person documentary about growing up Black in a mostly white Oregon suburb, Lowery interviews high school teacher Nia Lewis, who declares: “There are no systems in place to support students of color in predominantly white schools.”

It’s a truth Lowery has lived.

She was in third grade when she first realized her skin color might set her apart. A little boy in her class refused to use the water fountain after her, fearing that her darker skin would “rub off” on him.

Lowery’s oldest daughter, Jayla, was about the same age when she started asking her own questions, like why she was the only “brown kid” in her class who didn’t speak Spanish and, a few years later, why people commented on her hair.

“We had a conversation about where we live, how to handle yourself, that it’s OK to just be you,” Lowery said. “But I started looking back at my own experience and thinking, ‘Huh, this is a good opportunity to dig into this experience a bit more.”

The result: Lowery, a media arts graduate from Pacific University, created the feature-length documentary Black Girl in Suburbia, about the experience of growing up as an African-American woman in the predominantly white suburbs of Oregon and elsewhere in the United States.

OREGON IS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE “WHITEST” STATES IN THE COUNTRY, a dubious legacy created by decades of racist policies and laws that, literally, forbade African-Americans from living in the state.

Fewer than 2 percent of Oregon residents identify as Black, and the numbers drop even lower outside the major cities. In West Linn, the suburb where Lowery grew up, less than 1 percent of residents identify as Black.

The community is one of the wealthiest in the state, boasting Oregon’s fifth-highest per-capita income. It’s been named to national “best places to live” lists and is often thought of as the home of members of the Portland Trailblazers NBA team.

Lowery is quick to point out, though, that she didn’t grow up “on top of the hill with the Blazers.”

“My mom was a single parent raising three kids,” she said. “There were times we were eating ramen. We didn’t have the big luxury set-up. That was not my experience.”

Lowery said she was always a minority in school and in her neighborhood, one of only a couple of Black kids in the entire community. At the same time, though, her zip code made her an outsider among other Black children she spent weekends with in Portland, where her mother ran a performing arts center.

“We talked different,” she said. “I was told, ‘You talk white.’ I don’t know how that is.”

It’s a tension that Lowery has heard time and again as she interviews other Black women in predominantly white suburban America.

“There are a lot of assumptions about what you’re like, who you’re supposed to be,” Lowery said. “There are lots of different experiences like that we talk about in the film.”

LOWERY SET OUT TO TELL A STORY THAT WOULD HELP HER YOUNG DAUGHTERS see that they weren’t alone. But she found that she had tapped into an untold experience shared by women across the country. 

"This is my story,” some said.

“I can’t believe you’re talking about this,” others wrote. “I’ve never shared this experience.”

Over the last decade, the film has been screened across the country, appearing in such venues as the Nevada Women’s Film Festival and the African American Women in Cinema Festival. It landed Lowery on the cover of 1859 magazine and in multiple interviews in regional publications, radio and television. At its 10th anniversary in 2024, it was still being screened in colleges, high schools and corporations.

“People are wanting and needing it,” Lowery said. “To start a dialogue, just to talk, became my goal.”

In the meantime, Lowery has taken to addressing the needs of other young people of color in a more direct way. In 2019, she became director of diversity and inclusion at Jesuit High School in Portland, and she later moved to a similar role at Central Catholic High School in Portland. 

“When I started [at Jesuit], there were students and parents who didn’t even know we had a diversity program.”

Lowery started to “build the program up,” especially by empowering students of color to create programs themselves. Students created assemblies, led workshops, and participated in community conversations.

Black Girl in Suburbia still plays a role in sparking those dialogues, Lowery said.

“Talking about whiteness is difficult, but necessary,” she said. “My own approach is about educating, not shaming anybody.”

This story first appeared in the Summer 2014 issue of Pacific Magazine. For more stories, visit pacificu.edu/magazine.