No, We are not the Same Student (of Color)
(This article was initially written for The Pelican, the St. Paul’s School student newspaper)
Students of color at St. Paul’s School are frequently confused for other students of color, regardless of their likenesses. Misnaming dehumanizes students of color by stripping them of their identities. Simultaneously, it reminds them about the realities of being a person of color at SPS: that they are not the default in the eyes of the community, and that the burden of defending themselves from microaggressions, like misnaming, is theirs to bear. Through a series of interviews with students on campus, the detriment of misnaming students of color — especially when juxtaposed against the effects of misnaming white students — is explicitly evident.
To preface, white students at SPS are far from exempt from being misnamed on our campus. When they are misnamed, however, it affects them less than it does students of color. First, white students interviewed for this article noted being misnamed significantly fewer times on campus and reported being less affected than students of color. More importantly, some white students like Blair Belford ’21 and Anna Samel ’22 attributed being misnamed to being new to the school or to a particular faculty member. Other white students, like Anna Smith-Moser ’21 and Cat Dewey ’21, attributed it to visual likeness and…
