Really enjoyed reading this. When I was 6 years old, my parents moved us briefly to Atlanta for my dad's work. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment downtown. I remember touring the local public school (predominantly... if not 99% Black.) My mom wanted to enroll me but the white teacher who gave us a tour actively discouraged it, stating plainly that I wouldn't fit in and would get made fun of. Ultimately, my mom agreed and homeschooled me. I still wonder how that experience might have shaped me. I ultimately got my own crash-course racial education when I supported an ex-boyfriend through his incarceration -- as a Black man, his own understanding of race in America was so profoundly shaped not by his schooling, which was similar to mine, but the books he encountered in prison. Were it not for him I may never had truly engaged with bell hooks, James Baldwin, Edward P. Jones and the non-fiction -- Just Mercy, The New Jim Crow, Worse Than Slavery, etc etc. Reading truly is a key to self-actualization. It still amazes me how much better read some prisoners are as opposed to the some of the men we elect to represent us.
Gotta love the Jesuits!! I'm a Hoya myself. The school still has so much work to do, but I'm encouraged by their commitment to reparations and the Prisons and Justice Initiative.
Thank you for this! Here's my mis-education story. I was part of the first official affirmative action class at Pomona College, perennially rated among the top five liberal arts colleges in the US. I majored in American Lit and American History, because I loved to read and write. So, so, so long after my college days I heard Henry Louis Gates on NPR talking about a brilliant American author---Zora Neal Hurston. Never heard of her. I felt betrayed and enraged by my education, which emphasized Steinbeck, Hemingway etc.
Indeed a crime. Thank for the personal stories.
Really enjoyed reading this. When I was 6 years old, my parents moved us briefly to Atlanta for my dad's work. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment downtown. I remember touring the local public school (predominantly... if not 99% Black.) My mom wanted to enroll me but the white teacher who gave us a tour actively discouraged it, stating plainly that I wouldn't fit in and would get made fun of. Ultimately, my mom agreed and homeschooled me. I still wonder how that experience might have shaped me. I ultimately got my own crash-course racial education when I supported an ex-boyfriend through his incarceration -- as a Black man, his own understanding of race in America was so profoundly shaped not by his schooling, which was similar to mine, but the books he encountered in prison. Were it not for him I may never had truly engaged with bell hooks, James Baldwin, Edward P. Jones and the non-fiction -- Just Mercy, The New Jim Crow, Worse Than Slavery, etc etc. Reading truly is a key to self-actualization. It still amazes me how much better read some prisoners are as opposed to the some of the men we elect to represent us.
Gotta love the Jesuits!! I'm a Hoya myself. The school still has so much work to do, but I'm encouraged by their commitment to reparations and the Prisons and Justice Initiative.
Thank you for this! Here's my mis-education story. I was part of the first official affirmative action class at Pomona College, perennially rated among the top five liberal arts colleges in the US. I majored in American Lit and American History, because I loved to read and write. So, so, so long after my college days I heard Henry Louis Gates on NPR talking about a brilliant American author---Zora Neal Hurston. Never heard of her. I felt betrayed and enraged by my education, which emphasized Steinbeck, Hemingway etc.