Why #BlackInBrooklynTech Hits Home
I opened Facebook today to a number of posts about Black people expressing their grievances beside a hashtag. Unfortunately this doesn’t surprise me, as this occurs on a very frequent basis (see #BlackLivesMatter, #InSolidarityWithMizzou, #ICantBreathe, and the sheer number of others which a listing of could constitute a post of its own). But my response to these posts is minimal at best; it is usually either a discussion with closer friends who understand me or a reply to a super ignorant Facebook comment if it really speaks to me. However, something hit me really hard with the #BlackInBrooklynTech stories that made me feel the need to write this post (which should be read more as a long Facebook status than a serious blog post or article).
I understand this all too well. I graduated in June 2014 from the Bronx High School of Science, another one of New York City’s “Specialized High Schools” (in addition to Brooklyn Tech). In April 2015, Brooklyn Tech’s population was about 8% Black students while Bronx Science’s was about 3% Black students, according to the NYC Department of Education. However, it can feel like you’re the only one when everybody around you constantly refers to your race — whether in jest or in seriousness. I dealt with this quite a bit during my years, from simple yet unnecessary focusing on my identity as a Black student by my peers to more obnoxious encounters with some members of the student body.
Perhaps one thing I tried to avoid the most during my high school years — relevant to my status as being #BlackInBronxScience — was commenting on certain literature read in our English classes. I will never forget the many stares in my general direction as I had to read a section of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn aloud to the class which involved any reference to the character Jim, the slave with whom main character Huck Finn runs away. Or the stares when a passage involving Crooks in Of Mice and Men was read. Or any book that had a character known to be Black, for that matter. I remember convincing myself to avoid participating in discussions of most of these texts, after a number of occasions in which my sharing of responses to a teacher’s questions led to my peers stating, “Of course you’d think so, Terrell.”
Another example arises with the school’s administering of the PSAT exam, an exam meant to predict your scores on the SAT exam. Announcements were made on the loudspeaker, dictating instructions on how to properly fill out the very large scan sheet with identifying and demographic information prior to the exam. One year, the other students in my room stared me down as the announcer read something along the lines of, “Fill in the bubble for this question if you are Black or African-American and would like to take part in the National Achievement Scholarship Program,” something friends and I referred to as the “Black box”. One peer even had the nerve to say, “Hey, it’s Terrell’s favorite question!” in a voice loud enough for me to hear from across the room.
I recall a classmate (noting that I wasn’t particularly close to this person) approaching me in my freshman year to make me feel better about a low performance exam grade by saying, “Your people usually get a -50% [negative fifty percent], so you should be proud,” as if that even made any sense. I recall a student sagging his pants in front of me in the gym locker room, only to turn around and say, “Look, I’m more Black than you are,” in an attempt to be funny. There were many quips made about how I belonged “down the street,” at neighboring DeWitt Clinton High School, a zoned school with a significantly larger Black population. I was frequently asked if I was in the school’s chapter of Key Club International to serve as the token Black person. I was questioned as to why “my people” could not be as smart as I was (despite the fact that I typically felt less intelligent than the rest of the school’s students). There’s no forgetting oft-heard statements like “you talk like you’re a White person, how are you Black?” and other quotes of similar intent.
And that is just the beginning of what I experienced. Again, some of these anecdotes may seem more humorous and light-hearted in nature — and I’m personally not trying to say that the schools are explicitly racist (note that this is my first and only use of that word in this post) — but the point still stands that this was the atmosphere I lived in during those years.
Now, from my understanding, most people posting with the hashtag did not hate their time at Brooklyn Tech overall. Similarly, I loved my experience as a student of Bronx Science, faults and all. I’d even argue that these experiences helped me in solidifying my own personal identity. But these posts are supposed to get people to see that there are problems. There is always room to improve. Chalking this up to, “the real world won’t be this kind to them,” is no reason to allow or encourage targeted negativity in an educational environment. And the start of that is to not outcast parts of our schools’ population, so that current and future students at schools similar in demographics to Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science don’t have to feel isolated to a point where they need this hashtag.
Terrell Frederick Merritt
Bronx High School of Science ‘14
#BlackInBronxScience
If you want to talk about this, let’s start a conversation and get people talking. Feel free to comment on this post, converse with me on Twitter @terrellfmerritt, or post on your own and use the hashtag #BlackInBrooklynTech.
