Names have been changed.
In the spring of 8th grade, after endless nights of working on my application, I was accepted on a full scholarship to the Lycée Français de New York. It was a huge upgrade—from my poorly funded charter school on the West Side of Harlem to an Upper East Side, $50-grand-a-year private school. I had worked hard and secured my own silver spoon.
Back at my old school, I had just four classes and barely any workload; I wanted more of a challenge. The Lycée, which had about a thousand students from pre-K through 12th grade, sent several graduates to the Ivy League each year. Its website featured curated photos of diverse students and mentioned “cultures” a lot. Flags of countries from around the world hung in the halls.
All our classes were in French and most students could speak both French and English fluently. My family is from a French-speaking country in Africa. Though I moved to New York when I was 3, we spoke French at home, so I was fluent.
But in my freshman class of 96 students, only three had two Black parents (as opposed to being mixed-race). So, when I first got to the Lycée, my race felt at the forefront of my identity like never before.
My freshman year, I was assigned Madame Celine as my advisor. She also hosted the homeroom and led non-school activities for my class. At our first advisory session, she asked the class the meaning of our names. The class had two Japanese boys, a few Lebanese kids, and a Kenyan guy who was mixed-race. Though most of the people in my class were not French, and many were, like me, trilingual, it was only me that she asked to speak “my language.” It made me feel exoticized. I ended up muttering a few words in the indigenous language that I also grew up speaking.
Another time, she asked me and a biracial girl in front of the class, “Do you know how to swim?”
And still another time, she said the n-word while reading a passage with the word in it. The n-word isn’t considered a slur in France, where she’s from, but she’s been in the U.S. for a long time. She read the word in a class with only one Black student, me. It made me very uncomfortable.
It wasn’t just teachers; students said racist or thoughtless things too. Once, a French-Japanese classmate ran up to me at lunch, and asked, “Are you a part of a gang?” He had barely spoken to me before.
That question felt like a slap to my face. Did I look like a thug? What did that even mean?
“No,” I responded with a blank stare.
I shrugged it off: At least he hadn’t called me a racial slur. Maybe he was trying to be funny? Or maybe he was profoundly ignorant. I didn’t feel like starting a commotion over his question. I didn’t want to be a nuisance.
Speaking Up
Later in freshman year, my friend Julia introduced me to the Black Student Union. The first meeting was in a plain room with stale air, but I sighed with relief walking in. I’d never seen that many Black people together at this school.
Every Tuesday after that, I went to BSU. People shared microaggressions or just plain aggressions they’d experienced at school. Members encouraged each other to report incidents of racism. But we also laughed and goofed around and just talked.
Soon after I joined BSU, in Madame Celine’s French class, a boy named Mike announced, out of the blue: “Black people commit more crimes than white people.”
The class went silent.
I was confused. What did Black criminality have to do with French class?
I knew that this boy often fished for attention, so I brushed it off as always. But he went on, “Blacks are 13% of the population but commit 55% of crimes.”
I seethed silently. How dare he, a rich white kid from the Upper East Side, utter such words in a class with four Black students? If he committed a crime, I feel like the most punishment he would receive would be a slap on the wrist. The nerve he had to stereotype an entire race when he could buy his way out of everything. (And at a school with so many parents in finance, he should know that crime stats don’t begin to capture actual levels of criminality.)
Remembering our BSU gospel to not stay silent, I decided after class to report him. Our school had a platform to report racist or inappropriate behaviors. I opened up the website and wrote a 100-word paragraph recounting his racist remarks. I included my name.
I had to explain to these three white men that what Mike said wasn’t just edgelord humor. These clichés of Black people as criminals undermine, hurt, and endanger us.
A few days later, our dean called for a meeting between me and the boy in the dean’s office.
There were four people in the room—my dean, Mike, me, and a history teacher who was serving as DEI coordinator. I had to explain to these three white men that what Mike said wasn’t just edgelord humor. These clichés of Black people as criminals undermine, hurt, and endanger us.
“Well, the FBI reported it!” Mike replied while rolling his eyes. The dean sat while looking at us bickering at each other and finally said, “Mike, you have to apologize, and it’s better if you avoid each other.”
“I apologize for what you think I said wrong,” Mike muttered.
Unsatisfied with this outcome, I spilled it all at the next BSU meeting. The people there understood where I was coming from. The co-president said, “It’s great that you reported it.” I felt empowered, normal—not like an outsider or bitter. Most if not all the Black students in BSU have witnessed or experienced racist aggressions from teachers or students. They knew how I felt and didn’t judge me for “snitching.”
BSU Made the School Better
BSU validated my feelings, and it helped me keep raising my voice.
It also broadened my understanding of the pervasive racism in elite, mostly-white schools like Lycée. BSU showed me the @BlackAtLycee account on Instagram, where Black students anonymously posted about their interactions at the Lycée, created immediately after George Floyd was killed. The day I was introduced to the account, I scrolled until the very end. Each post made me sadder, but I couldn’t stop reading about children being called “monkey” and other racial slurs. The account is no longer active, but it stands as a record of racism within the Lycée in the early 2020s.
Lycée tried to improve. In the 2023-2024 year, the school paid a filmmaker to make a film about Black students at Lycée and let BSU write the interview questions. The questions included:
– How is your experience at the Lycée, overall and as a Black person ?
– Do you feel represented at the school ?
– Has there been progress?
– How could we do better and change as a community?
– Do you ever feel like an outcast at the Lycée?
– What legacy do you want to leave behind when you leave the Lycée ?
I was interviewed and told the truth about all the subtle racial comments I heard at school. It was therapeutic and provided an outlet for me, even though the film still has not come out.
BSU pushed the school to be better in other ways. For instance, over time several people in the BSU complained about Madame Celine. She is no longer at the school.
BSU inspired more affinity groups such as the Asian Student Union. BSU members attended diversity conferences outside of Lycée. I went to one at Dalton, another New York City private school. That day, I met minority kids like me from other private schools. We made a poem together and read it out loud to the audience filled with faculty members and students of other schools. I finally felt heard and seen.
In May 2023, our school included three students from BSU in job interviews for the new position of DEI coordinator. The DEI coordinator who was hired, William, brought some of us minority students on a trip to D.C. for a leadership workshop the next semester. We visited African American museums and Georgetown University and took seminars on how to improve our civic engagement. These initiatives included white students as well as Black students.
Though BSU helped to an extent, I think Lycée still falls short on punishing racist behavior. To the question, What could Lycee do better, I’d say enforcement. When students get reported for racist comments, enforcement is spotty, which sends a message that the behavior can continue. I’m not sure if this reflects tolerance of this kind of racial aggression, or simply the school’s fear of confronting the students of wealthy parents. When I’d try to explain why a racist remark hurt so much, and the white people at school insisted I justify my pain instead of just believing me and doing something, it made me feel like my voice and experience didn’t count.
I spoke up at Lycee: I did my share of the work. The Lycée has done some work (though I’d like to see the film). But it can do more to make students like me feel truly welcome and heard.
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