Hi, my name is Drew and I'm black. I'm also a woman.
"Why are you making this about race?" Because everything about me is racialized in this society. The way I look, the way I dress, what my hair looks like, what music I listen to and my education.
There was a time in America where people who looked like me weren't allowed to learn how to read because reading meant understanding and understanding meant knowledge. And knowledge is a power that oppressors don't want the oppressed to have.
But eventually, black people created their own schools that were both separate and unequal in terms of location, materials and infrastructure. Nevertheless, we want because while the means has been stifled, our thirst for knowledge has never been quenched.
If you have less than half a brain cell, you're wondering "but how does that affect you now?"
Yes, I realize it has been quite a bit of time between Brown V. Board of Education and 2018 but the effects still touch me today.
There was so much time that black people weren't allowed to go to school and often if they did, poorer families had to drop out to help pay bills. But finally, we got to go to primary school. Then came the question of college. Would that be integrated?
There was a time when the answer was no so we created our own. That's why Historically Black Colleges and Universities exist, for those of you who didn't know what HBCU stood for. I do not go to an HBCU but I understand the historical need for them and I appreciate any place where a group of marginalized people can be themselves without the threat of oppression.
My parents used to tell me stories about how members of their families had to walk miles and miles just to get to school, but they were willing to do it since walking was better than not being allowed into a school at all.
As I stated above, I am also a woman.
That being said, there was also a time in history where women were not allowed to go to school because actual scientists of the time thought their heads would swell and their uteruses would shrink. I wish I was making that up, but unfortunately, I'm not. Therefore, for quite a while in the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, women were not allowed to even enroll.
Once they were, they were spat on, had things thrown at them, were locked out of academic buildings and a host of other terribly intimidating things.
Fast forward to now, where more women are in school and have more degrees than men.
I was having a conversation with a white boy one day and he was saying how no one in his family went to college so they didn't think he needed to and told him he'd be fine whether he did or didn't. And honestly, that's probably true for him, but that's not true for me.
I'm in college obviously because I want to be. But also, as a black child AND a girl, you get hammered into you at a young age how important education is.
There are so many people throughout history who looked the way I do who never got a chance at an education for that very reason. And there are so many people who look like me who died fighting for their right to a decent education and died before they got to see the fruits of their labor.
And yes these are things that I think about when I'm making my decisions. Yes, my life is about me but it also isn't. It's about all the people who came before to fight for their right and mine to the life that I have now. So for me, going to college wasn't my choice, it was my duty.
