As a child, I was denied being valedictorian because I am Black. Two months before graduation, Ms. Brody, my eighth-grade science teacher, a White woman in her mid-40s and the toughest teacher in the school, pulled me into her office and asked, “Do you want to go to college?”
“Yeah, sure!” I said, though I hadn’t given it much thought.
“You are the valedictorian, and you should be really proud of that. The salutatorian is in the SP class, someone you don’t know. But they are not going to let you do it.”
“What?! Why?” I asked.
“Because the parents expect the valedictorian to come from the SP class, which is the gifted class,” she said. “Your grades are better. Some of them don’t get the concepts. They are not smarter than you.”
Without knowing consciously that children were tracked according to “ability,” I was aware enough to see White and Asian students were always in the “highest” classes.
“The teachers make the decision, and they all got together and decided they did not want to upset the parents. But I think it is because they are White, and they want someone White to win the award.”
