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How the American school system destroyed me as a Black student

Quintez Brown
Louisville Courier Journal

Why did I ever go to school?

After reading the latest column by Dr. Ricky Jones, "How American school systems destroy Black students and educators," I wonder why so many Black students and educators have fallen victim to one of America’s deadliest traps. 

I’m still in the system. And the system has destroyed me.

I have written multiple columns on the subject of educational reform. I’ve written about my experience as a Black student in Louisville’s post-Brown v. Board of Education school system and shared different ways we can overcome today’s racial dilemmas.

This will not be a column of that type.

Going to college during a pandemic and racial uprising has radically changed the way I view our education system, and I have no interest in further legitimizing our largely illegitimate system. 

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Education is the most powerful investment in our future. Families around the world will give an arm and leg to send their children to a “good school.” Individuals will take on staggering amounts of debt for that promise of a healthier, happier tomorrow. 

And the resulting “student-debt crisis” is far from race-neutral. A report from the White House shows that Black students are more likely to borrow, borrow more, struggle with repayment and default on their student loans than their peers.

I’ll give you a second to think through your racist rationalizations on why Black people are a financially inferior group. After you come to the conclusion that systemic racism has somehow made Black people gain inferior financial behavioral traits that can be fixed through financial literacy (eye roll), I’ll show you, firsthand, the destructive tendencies of our school system.

Yes, race influences how teachers see their students’ potential for academic success. Yes, our school system has a long, ugly history of racial segregation. Yes, Black students across the country exist in classrooms dominated by white students and white educators, and yes, Black educators face many job insecurities and the same feeling of alienation. 

But what does this tell us about destruction? What does this tell us about the feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness that students of color deal with at much higher levels than their white peers due to the mental burden of systemic violence. There’s a myriad of studies to back up the claim that racism directly impacts mental health, but that’s not my point. 

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We could say a great deal about these researchers and the facts and claims of their studies, but I’ve grown sick and tired of the study of Black people, as if we are scientific anomalies that can be fixed with a new health report or task force. 

Many of you are well-aware of our destruction. The question is, do you really care?

Everywhere I look people are suffering. My friends. My classmates. My peers. Myself. Drug and alcohol addiction combined with the hyperconsumption of dopamine-driven social media feedback loops sold to us by billionaire tech companies surround us so we are no longer invested in healing, but rather, self-destructive coping. 

Quintez Brown on Broadway and Roy Wilkins Avenue on Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Institutions worry about their human capital and provide different lectures and variations of self-care programs as if we are inefficient machines in need of a new self-maintenance update, instead of self-conscious people realizing the cruelty of an archaic system of education that prioritizes competition and production over critical thinking and genuine care.

Did I go to school to learn how to survive? 

Inside this system is where you learn who matters. Did those kids, forcefully pulled out of their classroom by agents of the state, loudly protesting their situation, matter? Did the kids who failed to meet academic standards, failed to meet athletic standards, failed to meet beauty standards, did they matter? 

Columnist Bob Heleringer once considered me a “manifestation of the poor quality of public education in our community” and that I obviously had no idea what the word “fascist” really meant. 

Once he saw that I was a “recognized” scholar at an institution of higher learning, I was then afforded the benefit of the doubt. 

I never chose to go to school. I was coerced by the law and my parents to attend. I mean, imagine the violent consequences had I said, "No, I do not want to wake up at 4:30 in the morning and travel across the city to learn how to meet the standards of my peers and teachers. We can save the traumatizing reality of the school-to-prison pipeline for another day." 

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I went to school and became exceptional. I beat the odds. My parents allowed me to invest in a bright, comfortable future where I will have earned the benefit of the doubt in a world where my skin color automatically denies me such right.  

I’ve earned the right to say I’m not one of the poor, miserable “others” in the streets begging for a handout. I’m America’s bright future. I’ve become another symbol of neoliberal progress where my title and my “recognized” name will give hope to those in desperate need of food, security and shelter.

And thus I’ve become destroyed. No longer myself. But another tool of oppression. 

Quintez Brown is a writer at The Courier Journal. He studies philosophy and Pan-Africanism at the University of Louisville where he is an MLK Scholar. He can be reached at qbrown@courierjournal.com.