High School

Category

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…

AfterBirth

When you go see the movie “Birth of a Nation” and then return home to “your” city that’s 8 percent black; where your upstairs neighbor, a white male, continually tries to convince your black dad why he and other black people should vote for Trump, a misogynistic man with a history of racial discrimination lawsuits; where another neighbor who’s a white cop, has only spoken to you once in the 3 years you’ve lived next door to him - that…

Great Expectations

[caption id="attachment_757" align="aligncenter" width="3264"] Me and some of the girls from Spelman College's Early College Program in 1999[/caption] I had my life planned out at nine-years-old. One Thursday night, while I was at my grandmother’s house for our weekly Cosby Show date, we discussed where I would go to college and graduate school. I knew Hillman College would prepare me to become a lawyer, an author, and a cashier. Cliff and Claire Huxtable went there. He was a doctor, and…

Will and Ashley

[caption id="attachment_633" align="alignnone" width="471"] "Will" and "Ashley," on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air[/caption] “You’re dead to me.” For the longest time I thought that phrase was too dramatic and should only be used in Mob movies and reality shows. But as I’ve gotten older, there are a few people in my life that I’ve had to push to the outermost limits of my brain, almost like the deepest, darkest, coldest parts of the sea. They can no longer live in the most…

VaginaGate

[caption id="attachment_623" align="alignleft" width="269"] Me, my senior year in high school. I didn't take that many pictures at school.[/caption] “Stacy, you look like you could suck dick…but your pussy is garbage,” Fernando Thompson blurted out in our school lunchroom. I was sitting at one table; he was sitting at another table in front of me. He was in my class. We were tenth-graders. I stared at him. I looked at his buck teeth. I looked at his unibrow. I looked…