Sublime

The fact is, “exceptional Negroes” have always been a staple of an apartheid-like educational system that separates the “gifted” from the “normal,” and both from the “naughty” or “underachieving.” Sticks and stones will only break my bones, but words can lift or crush me.

W. E. B. Du Bois

The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever devised to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies.

“Freedom,” according to Jean-Paul Sartre, “is what you do with what’s been done to you.” This is true at the individual level — say, someone climbing their way out of a traumatic childhood into full adulthood — as well as at the collective level — think, for example, of the generations-long liberation struggle of Black people in America.