Racism

Tag

Not content to live with tokenism

Tokenism is being the one black student in a classroom full of white students. It’s being the only Hispanic employee in a predominantly white organization, and it’s when that historically white school or organization says it’s diverse because of that one black or Hispanic student or employee. For me, it’s meant being one of two black students in my class at my Connecticut private elementary school, St. Thomas’s Day School. It’s meant being the only black person in most of…

First Taste of Racism Arrived in 6th Grade

I’ll never forget the first time I experienced blatant racism. It was from a parent at West Woods School. This is the same Hamden school that recently made international news after one of its teachers cast a 10-year-old black student as a slave in a play about colonialism. After living in New Haven and attending private school for three years, my family moved to Hamden, and I was enrolled in West Woods as a fifth-grader. I was also 10 years…