The substitute then said, “I graded both of your tests after you finished, and you both got a perfect score. It also looks like you’ve both been getting perfect scores on tests almost all year.”
“Because we’re both really smart,” responded Fatimah.
“Or you’re both really good at cheating. You’re both articulate and do good work for students from your backgrounds”—yes, she really said this—“but none of the other students are getting these grades. So you’ll both have to retake the test in front of me during recess to prove you haven’t been cheating, or we can bring this to the principal.”
Neither Fatimah nor I responded. We both went to lunch and came back to the classroom during recess to retake our test.
As the substitute placed the exams on our desks and told us to begin, I just sat there, confused about what her saying “from your backgrounds” meant. What made me and Fatimah different from the other kids?
Then I realized that Fatimah and I weren’t just the smartest kids in the class; we were the only two nonwhite kids who were getting these types of grades. And the only way the substitute could make sense of that was to assume we were cheating. I was so distracted and disturbed by that idea that I couldn’t concentrate on the test. By the time the substitute said we had ten minutes to finish the exam, I had to rush through it.
The substitute graded the two tests in front of us. Fatimah got a 78 percent and I got a 70 percent. (Yes, I remember the exact scores; the moment is etched in my brain.) Not bad for taking our second test of the day and having our intelligence questioned by a racist adult. But the substitute used it as confirmation that we had been cheating all year.
She looked at us, then looked down at our new grades, and then back up at us, and said, “This is why you don’t cheat. You obviously both need to study more if you want to really be the best in your class. Think about how unfair it is to the other students who are actually getting better grades than you.” (The white kids, she meant.) “You can be the ones to get your families out of your neighborhoods, but not if you’re cheating yourselves.”
Fatimah and I said nothing.
When I went home, I didn’t tell my mother about what had taken place. When I eventually gave her my test, she was surprised by the grade and asked what had happened. I simply told her it was hard and left it at that.
In my mind, there was nothing to report back to my mother. She had taught me what blatant racism was in terms of things like the word “nigger.” The substitute hadn’t done anything that ten-year-old me could identify as racist, yet I felt it all the same. After that day, the substitute sat the two of us far enough apart that not only could we not “cheat,” but we also couldn’t interact.
I was so traumatized by the incident that I made sure not to get perfect grades on exams for the rest of the year to avoid having to deal with a similar incident.
I can’t say whether Fatimah did the same, but her grades dropped as well. We were both still seen as good students, but we were no longer top in our class.
I wish I could say things got better after that year, when Fatima and I moved on to a different grade with a different teacher. But the truth is, I’ve spent most of my life meeting people who were just like that substitute.
These were the white girls in high school who thought they were complimenting me by saying I was “cute for a Black guy”; the white guys who were apologetic that their parents wouldn’t let them invite me to their house parties because “kids from the ghetto are thugs”; the older white lady at my pet store job who would tell me how “articulate” I was; and the first boss I had after college, telling me I had “great taste in suits for someone from where I was from.”
I spent years carrying the weight of all of those people who wouldn’t let me just be great, the people who qualified the good and bad things about me by my race. If I was great, it was for someone like me, and if I failed, it was because I was someone like me.
The worst part is that it’s difficult to call many of these people out, because they don’t think they’re being racist. Society has conditioned us to view people of color in negative ways. Which makes it more difficult to stop racist behavior, because people are often saying things based on assumptions from what they’ve been taught.
If the president of the United States (I’m referring to Trump) and the media consistently call Mexicans dangerous, rapists, and thieves, for example, a person hearing this could assume it’s true and therefore expect every Mexican to be dangerous, a rapist, or a thief. So any Mexican they find to be an upstanding person is now the exception rather than the rule.
While these sorts of assumptions are inherently racist, it can be hard to get even well-meaning white people to see them this way. And damn near impossible to get white people who don’t mean well to see them this way. And I get it. This stuff’s complicated—which, I’m guessing, is why you’re reading this book.
I spoke with my friend Africa Miranda about people saying things and making assumptions that are subtly racist and how those internalized ideas impact not only people of color but white people as well.
AFRICA: One of the things, I think, is not even so much specific phrasing as it is just the surprise in their voices at times. . . . When you get in these rooms with white people, their level of surprise that you either can match their experiences or supersede them is, like—it almost turns into a little dance where they’ll kind of just throw things out that are very commonplace to them, be it the places that they travel or food.
It’s like their markers of class, and those different things are food, travel destinations, sometimes clothing, but usually it’s books that they’ve read or things they reference. I was on a reality show on Bravo and made some offhand reference to Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, and someone there had an awed reaction to me knowing about it. I’m thinking to myself, Well, I have an English degree, I grew up reading every type of book.
I had no clue who Miss Havisham was, because we didn’t read Great Expectations in school. I went to google her, and the first few sentences bored me so much I decided I didn’t need to know at this point. I’ll let Africa and her white colleagues have that one.
AFRICA: I always go back to that Chris Rock special where he’s, like, “What are we supposed to sound like?” You know what I mean? It’s, like, “What did you think we were going to sound like, or should sound like? These are words. I’m not supposed to be able to string a sentence together?” You know, and it’s not a compliment, and again, they’re so surprised that you’re so put together, and it’s exhausting.
What I realized was that the more well spoken I was, the more polished I was, the more put together I was, it went from white people’s surprise to their disdain, because as much as they think they like a well-spoken Black person, you go from the well-spoken negro to the uppity negro very quick, and what they don’t like is a Black woman that is too free, too well spoken, too this, too that.
For many people, whiteness is the standard for intelligence, class, and talent. Which is why, as an example, if you’re a person of color and you’re articulate, some will say you “speak white.”