Black Ivy Leaguer: Rev. Wright Speaks Truth
by Shannon Prince
A May 1 Newsday op-ed piece by New York Civil Rights Coalition executive director Michael Meyers denounced Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a "bitter, old-fashioned, paranoid and unabashed ‘race man,'" who has justly been "consigned...to the dustbins of history as a crackpot." Meyers, a former assistant national director of the NAACP, described Wright and "his ilk" as "fanatics" who "have always declared war against hope - that's why Barack Obama is Rev. Wright's natural enemy and big target."
A Dartmouth University student (and BAR reader) promptly responded to Meyer's diatribe. She wishes Meyers would stop invoking her peers to bolster his argument against Wright. - The Editors.
My name is Shannon Prince, and I am one of the blacks who go to Ivy League colleges that Mr. Meyers refers to in his article "Blacks who excel disprove notion America's racist." My only sibling, my younger sister, is also a student at an Ivy League college. Supposedly this means that we have disproved the notion that America is racist.
One of the reasons my sister and I were able to enter the Ivy League was because we went to a top tier private college preparatory school (which we loved despite its flaws.) We both entered the school in kindergarten. There were sixty available spots for kindergarteners when we applied to the school - fifty-five were reserved for students who were legacies. The school is one hundred years old and very few minorities have attended it. Those who did only began to be admitted relatively recently. In other words, our school's admission policy was racist, and it gave an unfair educational advantage to whites. In a non-racist meritocracy, the school would have opened the sixty spots to the most intelligent sixty children independent of other factors.
"Many of the parents were Daughters of the Confederacy and could finance their children's education using wealth they inherited from slavery."
Furthermore, the school's tuition was extremely high. Thankfully, many of the parents paying this tuition were Daughters of the Confederacy and could finance their children's education using wealth they inherited from slavery. During our seventh grade year, a few of these parents would generously let students visit their family plantations on a historical field trip. The fact that these parents inherited wealth due to racial oppression - and, inversely, that blacks lack wealth due to racial oppression, is racist.
My father is a college educated business owner who has sat on the board of a hospital and been given the keys to the city, yet when he drove, in his Mercedes Benz, through the racially restricted neighborhood he had to pass to pick my sister and me up from school, police would give him frivolous tickets out of resentment for him driving a car he wasn't "supposed" to drive through a neighborhood where he wasn't "supposed" to be. His success didn't prove America wasn't racist. Rather, his success made him a target for racism.
Furthermore, while I was in high school at this school, my mother (a stay at home mom and retired child therapist with three degrees) and my white best friend's mother were serving on the Symphony League together. My best friend's mother, whom I have known since the second grade, told my mother that I should not invite a white boy to the girl's choice school cotillion. She told my mother that this would make people uncomfortable, and that if I didn't know any black boys I should invite a cousin.
My family has been snubbed while eating lunch at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan and while having dinner at Tavern on the Green. We have been harassed by police, shop assistants, and parents at our prep school. We have faced racism from whites in service positions as well as whites who are our peers, because no matter how much less educated, wealthy, or successful a white person is in America, he or she is still white and despite everything my family has had to fight tooth and nail to accomplish, we are still black. I could write to you about many, many more examples of racism we've faced, but my letter would be much too long.
"Reverend Wright has probably done more to help young blacks succeed than either Mr. Meyers or Senator Obama."
Despite a few specious claims about black children's learning patterns and the origin of AIDS, anti-racist activist Tim Wise has already pointed out that most of what Reverend Wright said about America isn't divisive or fiery or anti-white but merely factual truth. And while Mr. Meyers seems to think Reverend Wright has some sort of antipathy towards black success, Reverend Wright has a mentoring program that puts black youth in connection with black lawyers, doctors, and other professionals, and his church has awarded one and a half million dollars worth of scholarships to students. Through these efforts and his church's many other uplift programs, Reverend Wright has probably done more to help young blacks succeed than either Mr. Meyers or Senator Obama. Barack Obama likes to use warm fuzzy words such as "hope" and "change" but refuses to realize that neither hope nor change are possible without courage, and courage means looking unflinchingly at our nation and engaging in honest dialogue. Courage means recognizing that history is not supposed to be therapy - it may not always make us feel good about ourselves, but it must not be hidden or equivocated if we intend to make a better future. It would be a shame for Barack Obama to gain the whole world and lose his soul (Matthew 16:26.)
Shannon Prince can be contacted at shannon.prince@dartmouth.edu.
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