The Nightmare of Being a Black Boy at the Oldest Prep School in the Country
Whether alumni or walking the halls of elite schools today, we recognize a tough shared experience
I laughed when I saw myself in the alumni brochure for The Collegiate School For Boys. I didn’t know why its editors included me. I didn’t graduate on time; I wasn’t a millionaire. But I knew why the faculty felt they had to print my whiskey-inflamed mug, big lips, and nostrils in the brochure’s glossy pages. I smiled at the gray bristles on my head; look at this old-ass man in the alum newsletter.
When a very-White place wants to seem less very-White, especially in 2020, the powers that be advertise your Black face and airbrush away the pain etched into you. They erase the lines, but not the lineage; as I stared at the image looking back at me, I couldn’t see the person I am now. I only saw the teen boy who cried because he had failed geometry.
In another slightly less White photo, my Brown friend and I flanked the outgoing headmaster, clutching private stock cocktails and tight grins. Mine was the smirk of someone who had barely survived and felt unworthy. My name in the caption, absent these notes. Even as a man now, I could still see myself crying in the third-floor classroom of the damp Dutch…
