I got to choose private schools, but will vouchers really help other kids make it?
“I was a statistical anomaly growing up in New Orleans: a black boy from a relatively well-off family in a city with one of the widest racial wealth gaps in the country. My childhood included yearly trips abroad and private schools for which my parents paid full freight. Those facts often put me in awkward situations. One night, my senior year of high school, I found myself on campus late without a ride home. I fiddled with my cellphone until a classmate, a white guy who was on the track team with most of the other black guys in my grade, came down the main stairs and offered me a lift. I didn’t play sports and we didn’t know each other well, so it was a nice gesture, especially since he lived in the opposite direction, in a suburb called Metairie.”