Whenever I felt the caged aggravation of boredom or loneliness in the 4th grade, any little thing could send me into reverie. The glint of the sun’s rays, tucked behind the school’s old wooden windows, could transport me to a vast, dewy field of flowers and wildlife. Or perhaps the classroom’s white lights were portals I could escape into and traverse whatever was on the other side all alone.
In hindsight, these memories were not only indicative of my rampant inability to be attentive; they also served as the foundation for an embroiling question: Why was it that in every daydream, no matter my surroundings, I always envisioned myself alone?
I was never quiet, nor shy, in my youth. Rather, I was boisterous and excitable, always laughing or meaning to find another friend. This strategy was foolproof until the 4th grade, when every object, joke, or show that we had found sensational in the grades before had dried up and become juvenile.
Demographically, the school was primarily white, with a smaller black population following directly behind. What I didn’t know at the time was that the older my peers got, the more they adopted the ideals of their parents before them; the generation that could no longer spit and fight to keep our races separated instead crawled off into their own neighborhoods, the ones they hoped to stay culturally linear. Rather than being so obtuse as to scream and kick, they merely whined at the dinner table at the end of a long day and their children listened.
My 4th year in elementary also happened to be the year Donald Trump was elected into office, and those parents felt all too comfortable sitting back and denouncing whomever he displeased. This means at some point during the summer of 2016, the school had split. No matter the grade, what we’d grown to understand was that the white kids would interact with their white counterparts. The same went for that of the Black and Hispanic children, usually grouping in small numbers.For all that I didn’t understand of the social hierarchy in grammar school, this was a concept I knew very well.
I, for my part, already struggled to relate to my peers. They would discuss trends on an app I never had access to, play with toys I couldn’t get, and take an interest in shows I would never have been allowed to watch. The friend group that had scrounged me up conveniently left me out of every group project, birthday party, and even the eventual naming of our off-color bracket: J.A.C., pronounced “Jack”, all of their names condensed into one letter to make the abbreviation. L didn’t really fit, they explained. My true belief is they purposefully kept me as some sort of spectacle, something to feel aggravated with when the world around us was too cruel or dull to digest.
There was a reason why I always drifted into such fantastical daydreams: the classroom was, in truth, very boring, and the death of our teacher’s father would keep her agitated and cold the entire school year. Even so, I always became disillusioned when I could see the discontent in their face with me. It annoyed them, the way I could never understand what they were talking about, the way my input felt unrelated, strange, and standoffish. A simple huff would send them all walking to another table, calling me insensitive, jaded, and annoying; my mumbled apologies for whatever marginal way I had disgraced them had to always accompany shutting up for the day, adding no input unless very reluctantly asked of me.
4th grade was the last year I spent at that school. I switched to a wholly black school in their gifted center in 5th grade. In the gifted program, we were still so ostracized for the illusion of intelligence we had over our peers due to the title. We were the “standoffish students,” according to our neighboring classes. The social hierarchy of race evidently had no place here; instead, “gifted” was just another title to rebuke in order to fit in.
I did fit in quickly, perhaps not with the other classes, but with the students around me. I made friends, ones I kept close coming into high school, friends who never discouraged me from being myself. Though I still feel bittersweet about needing to have others love me in order to love myself, I’m still grateful for the dichotomy between my experiences in a white elementary school and a Black elementary school. The stark contrast gave me a glimpse of high school, of what university may be like at a PWI and the many years beyond.
While I still daydream here and there, I still insist upon myself and demand respect from those in my orbit. It’s what I deserved all those years ago and what every child deserves as well.
In hindsight, these memories were not only indicative of my rampant inability to be attentive; they also served as the foundation for an embroiling question: Why was it that in every daydream, no matter my surroundings, I always envisioned myself alone?
I was never quiet, nor shy, in my youth. Rather, I was boisterous and excitable, always laughing or meaning to find another friend. This strategy was foolproof until the 4th grade, when every object, joke, or show that we had found sensational in the grades before had dried up and become juvenile.
Demographically, the school was primarily white, with a smaller black population following directly behind. What I didn’t know at the time was that the older my peers got, the more they adopted the ideals of their parents before them; the generation that could no longer spit and fight to keep our races separated instead crawled off into their own neighborhoods, the ones they hoped to stay culturally linear. Rather than being so obtuse as to scream and kick, they merely whined at the dinner table at the end of a long day and their children listened.
My 4th year in elementary also happened to be the year Donald Trump was elected into office, and those parents felt all too comfortable sitting back and denouncing whomever he displeased. This means at some point during the summer of 2016, the school had split. No matter the grade, what we’d grown to understand was that the white kids would interact with their white counterparts. The same went for that of the Black and Hispanic children, usually grouping in small numbers.For all that I didn’t understand of the social hierarchy in grammar school, this was a concept I knew very well.
I, for my part, already struggled to relate to my peers. They would discuss trends on an app I never had access to, play with toys I couldn’t get, and take an interest in shows I would never have been allowed to watch. The friend group that had scrounged me up conveniently left me out of every group project, birthday party, and even the eventual naming of our off-color bracket: J.A.C., pronounced “Jack”, all of their names condensed into one letter to make the abbreviation. L didn’t really fit, they explained. My true belief is they purposefully kept me as some sort of spectacle, something to feel aggravated with when the world around us was too cruel or dull to digest.
There was a reason why I always drifted into such fantastical daydreams: the classroom was, in truth, very boring, and the death of our teacher’s father would keep her agitated and cold the entire school year. Even so, I always became disillusioned when I could see the discontent in their face with me. It annoyed them, the way I could never understand what they were talking about, the way my input felt unrelated, strange, and standoffish. A simple huff would send them all walking to another table, calling me insensitive, jaded, and annoying; my mumbled apologies for whatever marginal way I had disgraced them had to always accompany shutting up for the day, adding no input unless very reluctantly asked of me.
4th grade was the last year I spent at that school. I switched to a wholly black school in their gifted center in 5th grade. In the gifted program, we were still so ostracized for the illusion of intelligence we had over our peers due to the title. We were the “standoffish students,” according to our neighboring classes. The social hierarchy of race evidently had no place here; instead, “gifted” was just another title to rebuke in order to fit in.
I did fit in quickly, perhaps not with the other classes, but with the students around me. I made friends, ones I kept close coming into high school, friends who never discouraged me from being myself. Though I still feel bittersweet about needing to have others love me in order to love myself, I’m still grateful for the dichotomy between my experiences in a white elementary school and a Black elementary school. The stark contrast gave me a glimpse of high school, of what university may be like at a PWI and the many years beyond.
While I still daydream here and there, I still insist upon myself and demand respect from those in my orbit. It’s what I deserved all those years ago and what every child deserves as well.
