On a recent Saturday evening, Grant High School senior Alashia Flora walks up the steps to the altar of Maranatha Church in Northeast Portland and gets her stole. She looks out into the audience and sees the big crowd that has shown up to support her and the other high school graduates.
That night, the community came together to celebrate the accomplishments and the graduation of 70 black seniors as they move forward to college in the fall.
“It was really just a great moment for me,” Flora recalls. “It was nice just seeing like all of the black graduates…It was very empowering. And then to have my family there as well, it was just a very proud moment for me because they just kind of helped me through it.”
Since moving from North Carolina to Oregon to Washington and back to Oregon, Flora’s race has become more apparent than ever. And in Portland, a mostly white city, Flora has felt isolated as a person of color.
She says having a constant change in scenery hasn’t made things easier.
She’s switched households a number of times over the last nine years. And in that time, she has come to know the stereotypes and obstacles she faces because of her appearance. Flora also knows the rush of overcoming such judgments and proving her critics wrong.
In the classroom, she’s at the top of her game. With a small schedule, she only attends Grant on A-days. She fills her days off and weekends working at Old Navy and creating videos for her YouTube channel, “Alashia Allure.”
The YouTube channel, she says, has helped her find her voice and gain independence; it’s proven to be a place of solace where she can interact with people outside the bubble of Grant High School and Portland.
“I want people to see me for who I am and understand that nobody’s perfect”- Alashia Flora
Flora was born in Portland on Aug. 8, 1998 to parents Patrice Flora and Yolanda McCowan.
As a child, she was energetic and active. Her mother, Patrice Flora, says: “Anything that was basically athletic she liked to do as a kid; she was always a good kid.”
At just a few months old, her parents separated, but Flora says it hasn’t strained her relationships with either parent. “It’s pretty normal for me,” she says. “Like I don’t feel like sad or anything. Just because they are really good co-parents, like they are pretty much friends…It’s been pretty much the same as if they were together.”
After her parents’ separation, Flora spent the majority of her time living with Patrice Flora, her older sister, Shawntavia, Flora and her older foster siblings, Ravell Sterling and Shalisa Jackson.
Flora attended Faubion Elementary School where she spent her days in the classroom, glued to the arts and crafts table. Her afternoons were spent planted at the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods After School Program playing basketball, running track and taking cooking classes. She gained independence and was in charge of herself.
But soon after, Patrice Flora’s position of 18 years at Kaiser Permanente was eliminated. So she and her 9-year-old daughter packed up their things, randomly picked a location and headed to North Carolina.
The move was tough for Alashia Flora and her mother. Shawntavia Flora and her foster siblings stayed in Portland, leaving the duo on their own in a new place.
For Alashia Flora, there was an added hardship leaving her other mother, Yolanda McCowan.
“It was a sad moment for me. It was a sad moment because it wasn’t agreed upon that she would go there (and) stay with the other parent,” says McCowan.
But it was also in North Carolina that Alashia and Patrice Flora formed the strong bond that they have today. On the weekends and days off from school, they would go out to get ice cream, go to the movies or more often than not, stay at home watching competitive cooking shows or HGTV.
“I was able to actually spend some time with her…for the first time in my life,” says Patrice Flora. “I was able to take her to school and pick her up from school…We were able to sit down on the weekend and do some fun things without me being too tired from having all of those foster children and running here and there, so we became really close the entire time we were in North Carolina.”
Additionally, Flora noticed a significant change in diversity. “It’s kind of like flipped; here it’s predominantly white, and there it’s predominantly black and Mexican,” says Flora. “I kind of feel that people there are more supportive…they kind of want us to succeed.”
After seventh grade, Alashia and Patrice returned to Portland because Patrice needed to adopt Shawntavia’s son, Mahlik.
But a year later, Flora was on the move again, this time to Tacoma, WA.
There, she began her freshman year at Curtis High School. But the social aspect of school in Tacoma was difficult for Flora, says Patrice Flora. The students had formed strong cliques that excluded her daughter.
Alashia Flora was alone. “Having to adjust every time I moved, it’s kind of like I would get used to something, and then it’s like OK we have to pack up and go. Having to adjust was difficult,” says Flora.
So after a year in Tacoma, Flora decided to return to Portland to live with her other parent, Yolanda McCowan.
“It was devastating, but at the same time I had already built the foundation. I had already set her foundation and helped form her habits and what’s right and wrong,” says Patrice Flora. “You know I had to just have faith that what I had instilled in her from birth through the 10th grade, that she was going to put it in place, and now she has to fly.”
For the first time, Flora would not be living with Patrice.
“It was really hard. I was really depressed,” Flora says. “She kind of supported me and told me, ‘It’s gonna be alright,’ and, ‘It’s for the best,’ and it’s not like I would never see her again. It was really hard, because coming from seeing my mom every single day to not seeing her every single day, it really had a big impact on me.”
Dionne Flora, Alashia’s aunt says: “Her unselfishness in the fact that her mom has adopted her nephew…and how Alashia stepped up unselfishly and helped the family and never complained; that just shows who she is. She does anything for her mother and her family.”
For the last move, Flora returned to Portland and began her sophomore year at Grant.
“Having to adjust every time I moved, it’s kind of like I would get used to something, and then it’s like OK we have to pack up and go. Having to adjust was difficult”- Alashia Flora
Flora spent her free time watching videos about makeup, hairstyles and fashion. The following year, she created a YouTube channel. She was inspired by YouTube content creators Raven Elyse and Alyssa Forever and aspired to make a living off videos. The first video she posted (although it’s been taken down since) was a step-by-step tutorial of her eyebrow routine.
Flora’s YouTube channel has been an outlet for expressing herself; her videos range from makeup tutorials to clothing hauls to video-blog style conversations with her audience about her experiences at school and her next steps toward college.
“It’s pretty intense just standing in front of a camera. You just feel weird,” she says. “But I feel that it’s kind of boosted my confidence a little because I’m like pointing out my flaws, and I’m no perfect person, and people can relate to that. It’s just me. I want people to see me for who I am and understand that nobody’s perfect.”
Senior year came with its assortment of anxiety-ridden tasks: a job, the growth of her YouTube channel, the college application process and the waiting game that comes with it.
But on Feb. 5, her world took a turn. While at work, she received multiple calls and texts from Patrice Flora. Her mother kept saying, “He’s dead; he’s dead.” Flora was left in shock, crying in the bathroom.
That day, her foster brother, Ravell Sterling, was shot and killed while walking into a store on Southeast 174th Avenue and Stark Street in Portland.
Ravell was the closest in age to Flora of any of her biological or foster siblings.
“Alashia had never experienced death…and she never experienced the death of someone who is close,” says Patrice Flora. “So to hear that someone killed him was very difficult for her.”
As Ravell had gotten older, he gradually grew apart from the family, eventually moving to Gresham to live with his girlfriend. “He was just kind of like distant, so that’s probably another reason why it hit everyone so hard because they didn’t get those last memories,” says Shalisa Jackson, Flora’s older foster sister.
After Sterling’s death, Flora shut down. “For me as a parent, that was very alarming because this is a person who is a go-getter; this is a person who gets to class, a person who is very active. But she shut down from everyone and everybody in her life,” says Patrice Flora.
Alashia Flora was riddled with panic attacks, and going to school or work became difficult.
She took a trip to see Patrice Flora in Tacoma and to get away from everything in Portland. There she was diagnosed with anxiety.
“They helped her with her anxiety and encouraged her to go back to school and told her the number one thing she doesn’t want to do is give up,” says Patrice Flora. Her mother Patrice says her brother, “wouldn’t want her to give up; he would want her to go back to school and see her excel in school.”
“It really like changed my whole attitude,” says Flora. “It just like pulled me out of this like dark cloud and like when I came back to school, I was more motivated.”
Flora went back to school and caught up on the work she had fallen behind in, and now she’s making YouTube videos again.
With more than 900 subscribers and 38,000 total views, Flora’s YouTube channel has grown tremendously in just over a year. She has plans to vlog her college experience and keep her audience updated on her life. She hopes she’ll get the chance to include more videos on cosmetology, beauty and fashion.
“It’s pretty intense just standing in front of a camera. You just feel weird”- Alashia Flora
Although she didn’t get into her dream school, Howard University, she was accepted into Hampton University in Virginia, as well as to Hampton’s 5-year MBA program. She says it was a nice surprise because although Howard University has the name and the legacy that she wanted, Hampton is a better fit for her goals of starting her own business.
She’s excited to be attending a historically black university, “Just the thought of being black and being empowered and again just being a woman, as well,” Flora says. “Overall, I just wanted to go somewhere where I was accepted and where people can relate to me.” ◊
To learn more about Flora’s YouTube channel, visit youtube.com/…8Q9rkLcFMt06yKFahiqqQ/videos.
