I Am Black—My Guidance Counselor Called My List of Colleges 'Too Ambitious'

"He said what to you?" My mom refused to let me continue, interjecting as I relayed the events of that afternoon's meeting with my guidance counselor to her. "He called my list ambitious," I repeated, being sure to emphasize the final word and convey the lack of respect with which he said it. "Excuse me," my mom responded, less a question directed at me and more a retort of disgust at this man's words.

Truthfully, I'd half-hoped, half-expected this response, and spent the rest of the afternoon crafting the right words to ensure my guidance counselor could expect a visit from my mother. I smiled at the thought of him receiving my mother's ire as she advocated for me, the overachiever who, if I were white, would be applauded for my hard work rather than insulted in the face of it. "His job isn't even to judge the ambitiousness of your list," my mother continued.

"His job, if he cares to do it, is to explain the application process." "Which is pretty self-explanatory," I chimed in. These are some of my favorite moments with her, us bonding over the disrespect of white people, providing opportunities for me to watch my mother's responses and carefully note her successful techniques.

This wasn't the first time we'd had a problem at this new school, either, so my mother was primed to bring our grievances directly to the source. "Right," she agreed. "Tomorrow, I'll take you to school and let this man know what I expect from him in regards to your college applications: not much."

The next day Mom followed me to school in her own car to meet with said counselor before work. I wasn't allowed to attend the meeting with her, it was grown folks' business after all, but I never had another meeting with him again. When I asked her about it later that night at home, she only said, "It's handled. You will apply to the schools we agreed on. You don't have to worry about him." I needed that protection. I recognize now, as an adult, just how much my mother shielded me from. I needed her shield much longer than I think she realized.

The list of 15 schools where I'd potentially spend the next four years of my life was negotiated carefully between me and my mother. It reflected my academic achievements, attraction to warm weather climates, and disinterest in staying in the Midwest.

My mother insisted on a big list of schools so as to gauge the market. I wasn't going to suffer from too many choices, but I could be easily derailed by too few, she reasoned. So, I knew even before this conversation that she'd be particularly affronted by his dismissiveness of the list she'd basically curated.

It wasn't a shock to me or my mother that my desire to apply to prestigious colleges was challenged by white educators. By 17 years old, I'd come to expect, and was learning how to confront, discrimination and racism in a variety of environments, but at school, interactions felt particularly egregious.

School integration, as a symbol of progress in the Civil Rights Movement, superseded the importance of cultural connections and mentorship needs of Black children in the classroom. Perhaps those advocating hardest for the passage of desegregation policies didn't realize this, or truly believed that the goal of educating white and Black children together would not lead to the isolation of Black students at school.

Either way, forcing Black students into white schools committed to maintaining educational distance between Black and white students created a structural and cultural cycle of Black academic isolation. It represents the beginning of modern Black diseducation.

Black academic isolation negatively impacts the mental health of Black college students in historically white-serving environments. Academic success at all levels is attained in part via hard work and persistence and an ability to withstand violence in the classroom.

Black students being taught by white teachers in classrooms filled with mostly white students means that the potential for imposter syndrome is high and instigated by lowered expectations of ability and predetermined expectations for Black students compared to their white peers.

It starts with little comments like that of my high school counselor, which implied that I didn't belong in prestigious institutions and ended in institutional violence.
The lack of Black advocates in HWSCUs [historically white-serving colleges and universities] means there is nothing between Black students and the institution itself, which is inherently uninterested in Black student success and run via white supremacist policies. Instead, we've been socialized to understand our existence in education as a lonely one.

We have come to expect the experience to be traumatic, punishment for circumventing institutional attempts at Black diseducation. The resulting anxiety and depression from daily exposure to systemic and individual racism have lasting physical and psychological impacts on the lives and futures of Black students.

The issue of trauma as a result of Black diseducation is not limited to our time as students. After graduation, the reality of a perpetual inability of Black students to benefit from the credentials for which they've sacrificed so much of their mental and physical health starts to set in.

Because Black people have been reimagined in the American social memory as unlikely to be uninterested in or unable to complete advanced education, highly educated Black folks rarely assume the same kind of capital from their educational training and positions. The social fact of Black diseducation permanently positions Blacks as uneducated, forced to justify not just our intellect or interest in learning but also that we've earned any significant status as a result.

The questioning of Black students' accomplishments starts even before questions about college attendance come up. By the time I was a junior in high school, despite my academic achievements, it became standard to question my ability. By the time I finished my doctorate, asserting my achievements, and therefore my ability, was a required part of my daily routine.

This unyielding non-belonging in education requires Black academics to constantly reaffirm our credentials to maintain access to predominantly white academic networks and the spaces where those networks are constructed.

This is an adapted excerpt from Dr. Jasmine L. Harris' book, Black Women, Ivory Tower: Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education, which will be released January 16, 2024.

Dr. Jasmine L. Harris is associate professor of African American Studies and coordinator of the African American Studies Program in the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas, San Antonio.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? Email the My Turn team at myturn@newsweek.com.