To be black and smart is simply not enough in this whitewashed world. Being a black woman and also a teenager, the pressure to be enough in a white world is felt all around me. I’ve been considered smart my whole life so it was only fitting for me to go to a magnet school to be surrounded by peers of my intellectual level. My school is primarily filled with women of color so the moment I stepped through those doors my freshman year I became just another person. Being gifted is only seen as this big, unexpected thing when you are existing in a world where you aren’t expected to be as intelligent as you are. However, in a school where you’re surrounded by smart people who are looking just like you in the white world, it can be hard to distinguish yourself from them.
It took me 3 years, up until this year, my junior year, that I finally started to come into my own person. For me, I had to become more than just a smart girl because everyone around me was smart. That was no longer a suitable description for me because, in all honesty, I am now in a space where I’m not the smartest. I found that when I separated who I was from my intelligence I realized that while yes I was a gifted kid, I don’t actually enjoy the traditional methods of learning. I attend a school where everyone around me wants to be a doctor, lawyer, scientist, and all of those smart people jobs you would expect them to pursue. I am one of the only people in my school whose not chasing box dreams even though I used to be just like them. It wasn’t until I got my first ever B that I realized I was descending into gifted kid burnout because when you run like a machine every day of your life just taking in information and regurgitating it on tests and in these classrooms you eventually wear out.
So many parents, especially in black families, pressure their kids into fitting inside that box as soon as they realize that their kid is pretty smart. The thing is we live in a society where intelligence doesn’t always equate to creativity. Because when you’re smart enough to be a neurosurgeon you have no business majoring in any type of art or pursuing any art-like career. That is the worst expectation that is put on gifted black children, especially young women. Young women are expected to work twice as hard to keep up with their male counterparts. I’m lucky to go to a school where I’m surrounded by so many smart young women but to see us still have to work a little bit harder to compete with people who we will never even meet is truly sad. I’ve seen many breakdowns because people need to be smart enough because we in the black community and even other POC communities that we equate being smart to be adequate enough. It is a sad world we must live in but it is the world that was created for us.
This op-ed was written by 17 -year- old youth writer Zion Gray who is a participant at Honor U Performance Arts Academy.
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