When we do read Western canon, we are told we didn't truly understand it. We're told that we did not read it early enough. We're told our teachers didn't parse it well enough.

Folks showed up in my mentions to tell me how old you were when you read Edith Hamilton's Mythology...

Even if you were well intentioned, I hope you realize that's a subtle way to undermine the Rest of Us.

Here's the thing. I began reading when I was 2 years old. Chapter books by age 4; novels by age 5, when I frightened my kindergarten teacher & then was sent for testing.

As a professor of education, I believe IQ tests are inherently biased. However, after that barrage of tests, psychological and medical, they told my parents that my IQ was 156.

Do you see me running into folks' mentions telling them, "Well, I am a certified genius?"

Never.

Here's why:

I was a little Black girl who happened to take tests well. I wore that damned gifted label like a weight around my neck for the rest of my childhood.

I started reading some canonical literature when I was little, too. But do you see me bragging about it? No.

ALL children are gifted.

Our educational systems *do not capture this.* At all. We understand a mere fraction of what it means to be intelligent. The way traditionalists understand "genius" is only if it is white, Western, or male - with a few of us sprinkled in for flavor.

I sincerely believe that if we do not defeat white supremacist logics, and soon, our species may experience extinction.

*We cannot have a fraction of humanity controlling and suppressing the whole.* We literally can't survive it. Neither will the current biosphere.