Sublime

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.

We are currently in a global mental health crisis that is ruthlessly affecting teens and young adults at a rate unlike anything the world has ever seen. In the dozens and dozens of talks and presentations I’ve given at colleges and universities, this fact seems to be abundantly well-known by those under fifty and almost completely, cluelessly unkno

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.

I thought I was a subpar student and was bombarded by messages—from Black people, White people, the media—that told me that the reason was rooted in my race…which made me more discouraged and less motivated as a student…which only further reinforced for me the racist idea that Black people just weren’t very studious…which made me feel even more des

If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives. William Blake wrote, “We are put on earth for a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love.” Turns out this is what we all have in common, gang member and nongang member alike: we’re ju

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.

Moynihan Report,