Realities of Race student creates campus conversation around race and justice

April 4, 2022

Next month, Alejandro Claure will complete his undergraduate education at Notre Dame, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Science-Business. Claure has been an active participant in Center for Social Concerns courses and programs, completing several Social Concerns Seminars, the Poverty Studies Interdisciplinary Minor, and the McNeill Leadership Fellows Program, which teaches students to be active citizens working toward the common good. During his time at Notre Dame, Claure and his peers created a new student club called Frontline centered on racial awareness and justice on campus. The club hosts conversations where students talk about race and related issues affecting those living on and off campus. 

The idea to create Frontline and confront racism on campus began after Claure completed the Realities of Race seminar. The course seeks honest dialogue about the complexities of race with regard to history, current events, racism, and privilege. For Claure, a childhood cancer survivor, it was easy to connect the pain his family experienced with the pain experienced by those he met in the center’s immersion courses. “When I met people through the center to learn about inequality and oppression in our Black Indigenous POC communities, such as visiting the site where Michael Brown was murdered by a police officer and meeting Latino people that lost friends due to gang violence in schools in La Villita, Chicago, I saw in their suffering the same suffering my parents and my friends went through with my cancer,” Claure said. 

Claure sees connections between his life and the things he’s learned at the center in other areas as well. His family is undocumented and Claure is a DACA student. As a McNeill Fellow, Claure learned how to affect change and confront systemic issues like those his family has faced by working with lawmakers and nonprofits. Looking beyond his time at Notre Dame, Claure hopes to continue working in advocacy for the marginalized. “In my career I want to advocate for our immigrant communities since they are unfairly treated with dehumanizing immigration laws and practices,” he explained. “They, like my family, should be treated with dignity and respect. I learned through the center that if our communities advocate together there could be a solution that can leave everyone better off.”