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On Black Excellence And Survivor’s Guilt
How do we cope with success, while knowing what we’ve left behind?
Mine.
Apparently, my elementary school principal was a racist. Let my mother tell the story, she railed against black and brown students in her school for no good reason, and it almost destroyed my educational career.
In the Maryland school system, you can enroll into an accelerated program, called the Gifted and Talented Program. We were told these courses were taught as if we were two years ahead of our classmates, and the grades we obtained during the coursework would have an extra GPA point added to the score. Once you’ve taken these courses, students become more acclimatized to AP tests and are pushed to excel like never before. When I was in school, your first academic pedigree depended on a single test you took in the third grade. Intriguing.
I don’t remember taking the test the first time; but I remember how my mother forced my third grade teacher and principal to let me retake the math exam. Apparently, she knew something fishy was up with my original grade. This time, I took the test by myself after the school day was over; so I didn’t know if I was special, or just in trouble.
There’s only one part of the story I clearly remember: my teacher telling me that, this time, I earned a perfect score…
