Overview:
What we say to kids matters just as much as what we teach them.
“My teacher said she will look me up in the Cobb county jail in 5 years… Wow!” This was a quote published to Twitter, now X, in 2014. It was posted by a young Black man named Jaylen Brown, who graduated from Wheeler High School in Georgia. He grew up in a diverse community in Marietta, Georgia, where the demographics are 42 percent white, 30 percent, Black and 11 percent Latina. He was known as ‘Mr. Georgia Basketball’ because he dominated the AAU space and led his high school team to clinch a basketball championship in his senior year.
Brown won a 2014 FIBA Americas Championship gold medal as part of the USA Basketball Men’s U18 National Team. He was also selected for the 2015 McDonald’s All-American Boys Game. At the end of his high school career, Brown was named Gatorade Georgia Boys Player of the Year and USA Today’s All-USA Georgia Player of the Year. ESPN rated him a five-star basketball recruit and number four of the 2014 recruiting class.
Atop all of his exceptional basketball accolades, he graduated high school ranked number three in his class. On and off the court, his work earned Jaylen a basketball scholarship to the University of California- Berkeley. He is fluent in Spanish, is progressively learning Arabic and practices playing the piano. He was in an MIT Robotics session when he secured the most triumphant basketball contract, in the history of the National Basketball Association (NBA). His foundation, 7uice has developed a Robotics program at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), that provides Black and Brown students with elite training and learning in the field.
Often dubbed too smart for the league by NBA executives, it is hard to understand how a high school teacher would attempt to destroy his academic prowess by making untrue predictions about his life. It begs the question…What more do Black kids have to do to be seen as their intelligent, gifted, authentic, incomparable selves in America’s schools?
I am not aware of the teacher’s race who made such an asinine and insidious comment about a young Black prodigy, and I don’t care. What I care about is that there are teachers, who hold licenses to support and steer children into spaces they never knew existed, and make them feel like they can become anything they choose. Instead, these same licensed teachers will perpetuate the debilitating and disruptive ideologies of inferiority that have stifled Black students for centuries. It amazes me that Black children can be stripped of their rights to be successful, intelligent, and dominant in classroom spaces by the very people who are supposed to inspire and empower them.
I am so grateful Jaylen Brown didn’t buy into the daunting misrepresentation unfairly placed on him. Knowing all of the accomplishments he earned as a young Black man in Georgia, I am amazed and in awe of his abilities to manage such a fulfilling academic and athletic career. As ecstatic as I am that he beat the odds and surpassed the expectations of all around him, I am saddened for those like him who will succumb to the falsities and fabrications in which they are enveloped by the people who should motivate them most. I have to ask myself… How many ‘Jaylen Browns’ are there in America’s prisons because a ‘teacher’ intentionally stripped them of their ingenuity and greatness? His story is a warning to educators across the country. It is time to call out ‘teachers’ who do not have the best intentions for ALL students in their classrooms.
“I think education is one of the most powerful devices that we have, and it’s one of the ways that you know our social mobility us being controlled at a very early age,” Brown said during an interview with CBS Mornings. “So being able to have my students there who are participating in my MIT programs to get to learn directly from MIT professors, MIT Scientists, NASA Astronauts, you get to directly benefit from those stories and those life lessons. So, my goal is to build the next leaders and next generational leaders of the world and I feel like with the Bridge Program that’s what I’m doing”.
How one could ascertain a placement in the Cobb County Jail on a person of such integrity, fidelity, and innovation is beyond my wildest imagination. We must be outraged about the profiling that happens to Black students in America’s schools and be intentional about interceding when we see it happening. Black children deserve the opportunity to engage in school spaces that recognize their exceptional learning abilities and talents and find meaningful ways to expose them to opportunities that will enhance their chances of overturning and overcoming systemic obstacles.
