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Racism at Regis

 One of my favorite essays in recent months is from a senior at Regis High School:


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/nyregion/regis-catholic-school-racism.html


The senior lives in Queens, and his parents are immigrants from Jamaica. He describes standard high-school issues: maintaining one's GPA, studying for the SATs, enduring Zoom burnout, feeling cut-off from one's classmates. But then he looks closely at his own identity, in a way that feels unusual when you're considering a teen's writing.


The student, Rainier, mentions racism at Regis, and he spells out precisely the forms racism can take:


*Students calling you a "monkey"

*Students using the N-word

*Students blithely complaining about affirmative action, as if such a program were not one, small, good step toward addressing a major problem

*Students turning their gaze on you whenever history teachers address slavery or the civil rights movement

*Students mistaking one non-white student for another in a photo collage, in a way that could or could not be "winking," ironic (This is like "30 Rock" humor)


Rainier next does something that really impresses me. He does not end the story with a victim's lament, which would be a standard teen move. Instead, he gets "very real." He says, "The Catholic approach is to identify one BAD APPLE, expel that kid, and imagine the problem is solved." (And this *absolutely* counts as the standard Catholic-school approach. As Rainier observes, you end up with secrets, lies, repressed hurt, and one pissed-off, unrepentant white kid, likely to go off and spread his poison elsewhere, in new and predictable ways.)


Rainier then outlines a better approach: restorative justice. He says it's tedious. (I love this.) He also says it helps. It involves regular conversations between obtuse kid and wounded kid, conversations monitored by a professional. It involves awkward silences. Two people get to know each other. (I imagine Barack Obama had a thought like this when he invented the "Beer Summit" a few years ago.)


You're left thinking, this kid is wise beyond his years, he has a nice, no-bullshit quality, and he is good company. I have used this as a model for anyone struggling with a college essay. But it's also just a model of strong writing--period. Detailed and genuinely thoughtful. What a treat.

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