Sublime

They lose attention because many of their teachers have lost attention, shed it in the heat of a formation that narrowed intellectual excellence down to one kind of performance, one kind of white body-mind.

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.

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.

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

My parents—even from within their racial consciousness—were susceptible to the racist idea that it was laziness that kept Black people down, so they paid more attention to chastising Black people than to Reagan’s

As ambassadors of aloha, Hawaiian women have been susceptible to the eroticization of their bodies and the insistent commodification of their aloha.

for one’s children.” Norton provided no empirical evidence to substantiate her position that certain “ghetto” Blacks were deficient in any of these values.

The teacher looked at her, looked away, and instead called on a White hand as soon as it was raised. As the Black girl’s arm came down, I could see her head going down. As I saw her head going down, I could see her spirits going down. I turned and looked up at the teacher, who, of course, was not looking at me. She was too busy engaging a favored W