summary via friend: "Researchers found that when a transcript showing strong grades was given a black female name, counselors were 20% less likely to recommend them for AP calculus compared to an identical but anonymous transcript." Happened to me (1/n)
https://www.smith.edu/sites/default/files/media/Francis_Counselors_BEJEAP_0.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0dED3LMtzr3f8rByQ9q4_3uPrtdThC2S9iH5gZb3ngoKvyRavJo087Jmc

I arrived in 9th grade at my HS having done algebra in middle school and geometry over the summer through CTY on a scholarship. I started a month late bc of family stuff. They put me in algebra 2. There was no room for me in the class (yay LAUSD) so I went to my counselor and

She was annoyed at the math teacher (who I quickly learned was stubborn, involved in the union, and took no shit), so she took me to the vice principal's office and told him to fix it. She was white. He was Black. He looked at my transcript and put me in algebra 2/trig honors.

This white woman looked at what he had done, looked at me, and turned to him, in front of me and said, "She can't handle that. She'll fail."

I was 13, had just skipped 8th grade because I took it in 7th grade, and was classified as highly gifted.

This is how it went:

I told my math teacher what she said. Three weeks later, I walked by the two of them talking in the hallway and he pulled me aside and said, "Have you met Chanda? She's only been in my algebra 2/trig honors class for three weeks and already has the highest grade in the class."

Three years later, when I applied to Harvard College, that same math teacher wrote in his letter of recommendation for me that I was the most talented mathematician he had taught in 30 years of teaching and

my middle school math teacher, a Harvard alum, was then teaching at my HS, also wrote me a letter, saying he believed that I had the capacity for contributions to cosmology but also that I would make contributions to philosophy of physics. I was annoyed by that last comment but

Last year, I published a paper on social epistemology and physics, so Mr. Wilson had my number lol

Importantly, what if I had listened to my counselor about not being able to do it? And

What if I hadn't told my math teacher what she said? What if he hadn't known how to handle helping a student overcome hearing that message? What if I didn't have a stubborn personality? What if I didn't have a Black vice principal? The white counselor could have done real damage.

Today I am a theoretical physicist in spite of people who looked at me and couldn't imagine a future theoretical physicist. I was lucky to have teachers -- men, yes you can! -- who did not have this smallness of imagination. But what if I hadn't?