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.

how Blackness is selectively celebrated (and contained) within the white imagination.

Had a brand of animal cleverness, the kind you see in pigs sometimes.

Paradoxically, many of these disciplinary policies are akin to the progressive vision espoused by eugenicists like Karl Pearson, justifying harsh discipline as a means to “close academic disparities.” Schooling becomes standardized testing without creative expression, arbitrary rules without room to breathe, Black Excellence without Black Joy.

largely the result of enjoying an abnormal amount of security in your black body.