That might be hard in Cupertino.

African Americans are the smallest ethnic group in Cupertino. While the 2000 U.S. Census shows that 2.8 percent of Santa Clara County residents are African American, Cupertino has only 347 black residents, which account for only 0.7 percent of the city's population of 50,546.

"Black children are confronted with so many issues," Irvin says. "As Micah grows older, I want him to be around someone who looks like him so he can have a support system and some black influence in his life. It's important for his identity."

At De Anza College, where Irvin also teaches, there are 707 black students, which represent 3 percent of the student body. Only 13 out of De Anza's 893 faculty members are African American.

To help the community better understand black culture, Irvin and other African American teachers at De Anza have planned a series of events, including forums, documentary screenings and gospel music, to take place throughout February, Black History Month.

"As a small group of people here on campus, we want to show the richness of our culture and share our history with other people," says Irvin, co-chair of the college's Black History Month Committee.

Irvin himself has an interesting life story to share. He was born and grew up in Norfolk, Va. He never had white classmates until he attended high school.

"It was a brand-new school," Irvin says. "Although the majority of the students were black, the school was in a predominantly white neighborhood. The police had to bring their dogs in to secure the area."

The tension not only existed in the school. When Irvin missed the school bus and had to walk three miles to school, some white adults would call him names and throw bottles at him.

"I just ran," Irvin says. "You never knew what they were going to do. That training probably made me a good basketball player."

Irvin has the build of a professional basketball player. He's well over 6 feet tall. He looks authoritative, perhaps because he was a police officer for 20 years. When he talks, he looks people in the eye.

Irvin found his way into the field of counseling because of the influence of two career counselors.

When he was in high school, a white career counselor told him he couldn't be a doctor, a pilot, a lawyer or a police officer because he is black.

"I will never forget. She told me, 'You people work better with your hands,' " Irvin says. "She suggested I should be a plumber."

Irvin was angry and determined to break through old stereotypes about African Americans.

But he still didn't know what he wanted to do until he met another career counselor—also white—when he was studying at San Diego Mesa College.

"She told me I could be anything I wanted, do anything I wanted," Irvin says. "I decided to be a police psychologist. After seeing white cops beat and arrest blacks, I wanted to know what made cops tick."

So after receiving a master's degree in counseling from San Diego State University, Irvin worked as a police officer in the Los Angeles Police Department from 1978 to 1998. As a supervisor of sergeants, he often counseled police officers as well as convicted first offenders, many of whom were in high school.

After retiring from the police force, he taught career development at San Diego Mesa College. He then decided to teach at De Anza. His friends had told him De Anza was a top-notch college, especially in counseling.

Irvin likes De Anza's campus. He enjoys helping students set academic and professional goals. But he would like to see greater diversity on campus.

However, diversity is in the eye of the beholder.

Ulysses Pichon, a reading and writing instructor at De Anza, has lived in Cupertino for 26 years. An African American, he feels Cupertino has become more diverse and welcoming. But it wasn't always that way.

"When I first moved here, I was stopped by a cop on Stevens Creek because there weren't many blacks here," says Pichon, 55. "But with the increase in the Asian population, Cupertino definitely became a more comfortable city."

Like Irvin, Pichon grew up in a segregated neighborhood in the South. He was born in New Orleans, the fifth of 13 children. His father was a carpenter and only made it through eighth grade. His eldest sister was the first one in the family to attend college.

"We thought about college, but when my sister went to Southern University in New Orleans, we all realized college was possible," Pichon says.

Pichon finished his college education relatively late. He was drafted at the end of the Vietnam War in 1971 and then was transferred to Monterey. After leaving the Army in 1973, he attended San José State University and worked as a tutor at De Anza to help students who had trouble reading and writing.

In 1975, Pichon became the fist one in his family to earn a master's degree. He graduated from San José State University with a master's in English. That same year, he got married and settled down in Cupertino.

Pichon's wife is a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge. His daughter is a student at Archbishop Mitty High School. His brother-in-law, René Jones, is the standards, assessment and accountability director in the Cupertino Union School District.

Although Cupertino has few African Americans, Pichon thinks Cupertino is a nice place to raise a family because of its community values.

"I do miss the presence of black people, but my wife and I have jobs here," Pichon says. "We just need to make the community work."

Although Black History Month celebrates African American heritage, faculty members and students of different ethnicities and interests work together to organize the events. The screening of a documentary about Bayard Rustin was sponsored by the Black History Month Committee, the Gay and Lesbian Club, the language and arts division and the social science/humanities division.

Rustin was a significant figure in the civil rights movement. He was an advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. He brought Ghandi's nonviolent protest techniques to the civil rights movement. Despite his importance, Rustin was marginalized because he was openly gay.

"Although this program is about a black human rights leader, we want to invite everyone" to take part, says Pichon, who also sits on De Anza's Latino and Chinese events committees.

Pichon believes Cupertino's diversity goes beyond ethnicity.

In his neighborhood on Mello Place, a Chinese family lives across the street. One of his next-door neighbors is a Japanese-American family. He also has white neighbors of various political affiliations.

"We have good interaction in our community," Pichon says.

He wants Irvin to become one of his neighbors one day, and he would like to see Cupertino become a home to more blacks.

For more information about De Anza events honoring Black History Month, visit www.deanza.edu/news/blkhist.html.