As the years went by and we moved from neighborhood to neighborhood and school to school, as financial woes drove us out with each rent increase, my school record followed. My quiet demeanor and love of books had me singled out as “different” from the other black kids and each teacher treated me as a sort of unicorn, trying to preserve what they saw in me as “rare.” For my brother, his reputation as a troubled black boy also followed him from school to school and class to class.
