Coming Home to Harlem
Names have been changed. It was 6th grade recess, and a couple of girls were complaining about how far away they lived from school. I stared off into space, kicking at the fake grass beneath my feet, hoping they wouldn’t ask me where I lived. To the mostly White, wealthy students at my public school […]
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What NYC Teens Actually Think About the SHSAT
In June 2018, I began to hear news about then-Mayor Bill de Blasio wanting to do away with the Standardized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), the exam New York City students take to get into one of eight specialized high schools. These specialized schools are seen as huge stepping stones into elite colleges. Instead, the […]
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Wondering About Where I Fit In
For the first six years of my life, I grew up on the island of Trinidad. I spoke with an accent, pronouncing three as “tree.” I ate Carribean food like roti, aloo pies, and pelau. I was accustomed to drinking water straight out of a coconut, eating mangoes from my grandfather’s mango tree, encounters with […]
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How I Fight Racism Both in the World and Within Me
Before George Floyd’s murder, I didn’t focus much on racism I’d experienced. But Mr. Floyd was just a normal Black man trying to get through another day in his life, just like my father, my uncle, or my older cousins. That infuriated me enough to see that I couldn’t ignore any more of the microaggressions […]
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