A Black student said a guidance counselor called the list of colleges she wished to attend “ambitious.”
In the upcoming book “Black Women, Ivory Tower: Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education,” Dr. Jasmine L. Harris details her experience as a 17-year-old student whose guidance counselor shot down her college list, per Newsweek.
“He said what to you?” Harris recalled her mother saying. “He called my list ambitious,” she repeated at the time.
“His job isn’t even to judge the ambitiousness of your list,” Harris’ mother said. “His job, if he cares to do it, is to explain the application process. Which is pretty self-explanatory,” the author responded.
Harris recalled her mother visiting her school the following day and meeting with the counselor before work. Harris said she wasn’t allowed to attend the meeting with her mother, and she never met with the counselor again.
When Harris asked her mother how the meeting went, she replied: “It’s handled. You will apply to the schools we agreed on. You don’t have to worry about him.”
In her book, Harris highlighted how the comments of her high school counselor implied that she didn’t belong at prestigious institutions. If she was white, Harris said her overachieving would be highlighted rather than insulted.
“Black Women, Ivory Tower: Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education” is set to be released on January 16, 2024.
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