Hampton: Aisha’s point kind of reminds me of this en vogue concept of imposter syndrome, where everyone’s performing their anxiety about their achievements out loud. I feel like that conception of imposter syndrome rarely takes into account the fact that some people arereally made to feel like they’re frauds by others. Clint Smith talked a bit on Twitter about the psychological toll that takes.

Harris: And then you discount everything you did that’s supposed to fall under our idealistic view of what a meritocracy is—the “right” things—like taking AP classes, doing those extracurriculars, etc. It depended on the environment, and my age, I think. By the time I left college, I think I learned that the fraud thing was their problem, not mine.

Wallace: Yes. All the pop Twitter hype around imposter syndrome kinda bugs me actually, because it feels like some folks are claiming it that actually have no idea what it’s really like to have everybody and the institutions telling you for your whole life that you don’t belong here.

It blows my mind all the stuff you have to overcome just to make it through a normal day.

Hampton: What do you mean by that, Carvell?

Wallace: Well I mean to even sit down in a class at my college, I’ve already been told you have to be twice as good, otherwise you’ll fail. I’ve already had cops pointing guns at me for just standing around, no lie. I’ve already had dorm mates telling me that I’m pretty smart for a black guy. I’ve already had the money on my dining hall card run out. And that’s all before I even open to Page 1 of the physics textbook.

Bouie: I don’t think I’ve experienced imposter syndrome? Mostly my response to people questioning my worth or value has been an internal “Screw you. I’ll show you how good I am.”

Wallace: I wonder if that competitiveness is a facet of imposter syndrome? Like the feeling that you have to prove in the first place. I think that there are people operating out here who don’t feel like they have to prove how good they are. That they’re just supercomfortable and free from any anxiety around the burden of proof at all.

Harris: Makes me think of Sammy Davis Jr.’s quote from Yes I Can: “I’ve got to be a star like another man has to breathe. I’ve got to get bigger. I’ve got to get so big, so powerful, so famous that they’ll see a man and then somewhere along the way they’ll notice he’s a Negro.”

Wallace: Yeah, I remember reading that book in high school and now that quote makes me feel so sad. Like, what a burden to put on yourself, that you have to be better in order to just be.

Harris: It’s so sad. But it might be one of the most black American quotes, ever.

Hampton:Carvell, I know you have teenagers. How do you talk about these dynamics with your kids as they think about college?

Wallace: It’s kind of weird because the truth is, I’m a lot closer to those privileged families as an adult than my mother was. Certainly not there, but closer. Like my son wants to go to the same school I went to, so the idea that he could be a legacy kid just blows my mind. There was no legacy for 17-year-old me.Still my son is not a great student really, though a really smart kid. He wants to go to school for film. His mother and I, both from working-class backgrounds, just assume he’ll have to get his shit together in junior college like you’re supposed to. My daughter is a straight-A student, and we assume she will get in on merit because she’s very ambitious and always has been. At no point would we think we should give our kids a boost of some kind. That’s absurd to us.

Hampton: I was wondering how y’all feel about race-based affirmative action, just generally? To me, it feels like an (extremely necessary) double-edged sword at times.

Harris: Well, it’s not like most—any?—of us needed the affirmation, but this new scandal just amplified the fact that there are so many ways to get into college, and meritocracy isn’t really one of them. When people argue against affirmative action, my immediate thought is of the legacy folks and the people who donate money to their schools.

Wallace: Until I look around and see total and complete social and political amends for slavery and all of its attendant destruction, affirmative action will always feel necessary. The problem it has, I think, is that white people are mad about it. But that’s, like, the only problem if I’m not wrong. They can just be mad.

Hampton: There are so many kinds of affirmative action in the college admissions process that aren’t race-based, like athletic scholarships for lacrosse or water polo.

Harris: Also, affirmative action really only does so much. If I recall correctly, when I was at Northwestern, black people made up less than 10 percent of the undergrad class.

Hampton: That was still true when I was there a few years ago.

Wallace: Right. Like a lot of the objection appears to be based on the idea that affirmative action is unfairly tipping the scales, but PWIs [predominantly white institutions] are called PWIs for a reason. The scale is far from tipped.

Harris: Also: hello!

Wallace: Lol literally TODAY! IN NEW YORK.

Hampton: Do y’all think the Varsity Blues scandal has made people more aware of how the scales are tipped?

Wallace: I wish I believed that racism responded to logic, but I don’t. It does not respond to evidence or facts or video tape or dashcam footage or indictments. I think there are some white people who do respond to learning more, having it made clearer, waking up from the delusive narrative of this country’s meritocracy, but there are also many who never will because they don’t want to.

• Higher Ed
• Race
• Racism
• Black Americans
• Affirmative Action
• College Admissions Scandal

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