Tracey Meares is wicked smart.
She was the top student of her high school class, then earned a B.S. in engineering from the University of Illinois, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.
After college and law school, she clerked for a federal appellate judge, worked as a federal trial attorney for the DOJ’s antitrust division, then became a law professor (now at Yale Law School, where she also served as a deputy dean). Her specialty is police reform. Read her bio here.
But she wasn’t her high school class valedictorian until last week. Instead, “Meares shared the title of ‘Top Student’ with a White student at her 1984 graduation.” The school previously always had a valedictorian and a salutatorian.
She believes she “was passed over for the title valedictorian because she’s Black,” CNN says. It took 38 years, and a different school administration, to rectify that but she was finally awarded the title. Read story here.
Republican legislators in multiple states are busying themselves making it illegal for teachers to tell schoolchildren that systemic racism has existed in our country. Why bother? They’re going to find out anyway, because it still exists. Especially wherever Republicans are in charge.