"When I was asked to give an example of something racist that happened to me for this project, I had a difficult time finding the right story.
Maybe because I don’t know if I have one specifically crushing experience that has shifted the way I live. It might be because the racism in my life is mostly micro aggressions or gate keeping. It’s not flashy, it’s small, endlessly exhausting interactions. Or maybe it’s because I don’t remember them all. When something awful happens so often, you sometimes make a conscious decision not to engage with every instance of it for survival purposes. Or you brush it off. Or it might be that I know the experience was racist but I was gaslighted into believing it wasn’t and I don’t want to be gaslighted again.
I guess, since my passion is education, I’ll share two distasteful experiences during my education journey.
Both in high school and during my undergraduate, I was told by two separate guidance counsellors that the path I wanted to follow was too ambitious for someone like me. In high school, it was recommended that I go to college instead of university although I had one of the top grades in my year. In university (once I ignored the advice to go to college), the guidance counsellor told me that I was not competitive enough to go to law school. I graduated from law school last summer and I'm in the process of qualifying. I should be a lawyer by 2021-2022.
Those two events are not uncommon to the Black experience. Implicit bias by guidance counsellors creates a tunnel to college for university capable students or it crushes the dreams of Black youth. An example of systematic racism."