I was a victim of racism at my Jesuit high school. I know we can do better.
Jesuit high school. I know we can do better.
I was one of the only African-American students when I started attending an all-boys Jesuit high school in the mid-1970s. However, for my first few years I never doubted my place among my more well-off, mostly white peers.
My teachers and classmates challenged me to reach the heights of academic excellence and to embody the Jesuit ideals of service and social justice.
But during my junior year, this feeling of academic collegiality and brotherhood came to a painful halt. One day, I found some of my classmates gathered at the front of the classroom in a fit of laughter.
When I approached them, I realized that they were gazing at a piece of paper: On it was an image of a naked African pygmy woman with her breasts exposed, and there was some sort of sticky substance smeared over the picture. There were words written across the top: It was my last name followed by the word “Mom.”