Exceptionalism also carried the danger of tokenism, which allowed systemic issues to be ignored by pointing to a few examples of supposed success while ignoring the more common story. I was often a poster child of progress, appearing in college marketing materials and conference brochures to show that change was possible. Still, I knew that given another set of cards, my life trajectory could have been very different. There are many hardworking, brilliant people who could be in my place if they’d had similar opportunities. I had to concede that many factors outside my control contributed to my
...more
