Photo Source Clinton Steeds | CC BY 2.0
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony on Thursday was brave, emotional, heroic, inspiring. She shared her truth and bared her soul in front of old white men who didn’t even have the guts to talk to her directly.
Brett Kavanaugh, on the other hand, was mad-sad. It’s that emotion white people sometimes have when they can’t believe they’re being wronged, see themselves as the victim, get red in the face and are lashing out. Think early John McEnroe.
That he can speak like that and still be taken seriously speaks to an immense privilege that he’s had all his life. “Hard work” alone did not get him into Yale; we now know he had a grandfather who was an alumnus.
I grew up with people like Brett Kavanaugh. Elite DC all-boys private schools, whether Georgetown Prep or Saint Albans (where I attended from 1985-1994), have much in common.
While I took pride in attending, “STA” as a kid, 24 years later, I view things (myself, race, gender) through a different lens. If you teach 10 year-olds that they are “the best and the brightest,” there’s a danger they’ll forever believe it.
Saint Albans boys have been taught that they are exceptional, which too often means unaccountable. They will be bailed out again and again if they crash their BMW, cheat on a test, or get a girl pregnant. The vast majority have whiteness, a network of influential parents and school institutional power, invested and complicit. Success is…