In May 2020, Princeton will graduate its first black valedictorian in its history. The student, Nicholas Johnson, is celebrated and deserves all of the praise that comes his way. The College; however, does not. Nor does the American educational system. Nicholas Johnson does not represent a shift in the American educational system, nor does he represent tremendous progress for Princeton.
Before I write a take-down of an event that should be lauded, I have to acknowledge that I am white and could not possibly be attuned to the power of messages like the one Nicholas Johnson represents. I have been fortunate to see almost exclusively white men pave the roads that I may follow in business, education, theology, and science. I cannot imagine being young, looking for inspiration, and only seeing people that do not reflect my skin tone or background. The intention of this piece is not to put a damper on Nicholas Johnson’s incredible achievement. It is not to hold Princeton accountable for its historical tradition of racism either.
I hope to contextualize Nicholas Johnson’s accomplishment in the broader context of minority education in America. Nicholas Johnson does not represent a turning point in American higher education, because he is not American. Nicholas Johnson is a Canadian.
Johnson did not grow up as a minority in the American educational system. He did not attend American high school. He did not have to confront the non-academic challenges that contribute to the racial achievement gap in American schools. That is not to say that Canada ‘solved racism’, or that schools in Canada are more egalitarian, but it should prevent US institutions from pointing to a Canadian achievement as progress. Johnson’s parents are both doctors, he went to an excellent high school, he unfortunately does not represent the situation of most American minority university students.
The second reason that the US should not point to his achievement as a global one, is that he will likely bring his talent to Canada once he earns his doctorate. He is a Canadian citizen, his parents live in Canada, and his senior thesis was focused on preventative health measures in Canada. I think its fair to assume that he has some home country pride:
My senior thesis was studying a preventative health intervention designed to curb the prevalence of obesity in Canada and modeling that particular type of health intervention as an optimization problem and then developing algorithms to solve that optimization problem on large scales. So, concretely, that would mean being able to take a preventative health intervention and scale it up such that it would be applicable for communities with thousands or tens of thousands of individuals. That was the most significant research project that I’ve worked on this year. I submitted that a few weeks ago and I’m very, very happy with what I was able to accomplish.
The Daily Princetonian
I hope children of all races look up to Nicholas Johnson, but valedictorian is a personal achievement. He deserved the accolade on his own merits. The US high school system did not prepare him, and he did not get into a selective university because of a diversity policy (he was valedictorian of his prestigious high school). Instead of being an incredible story of personal achievement, his story may serve as distraction from the bleak truth of educational disparity in the US.
Polly Wanna Math 