We were never wretched

A few notes from the Blackprint 20, a family gathering in defense of the Black mind.

Feb 15, 2026

I’m in the cafeteria of Boys Latin school in Philly on a Saturday.

Not because I have to be. Not for grant money or the photo op or the resumé line. I’m here because the people in this room believe something the world has spent centuries trying to disprove, that Black children are born perfect.

Perfectly worthy. Perfectly capable. Perfectly beautiful.

Not salvageable. Not fixable. Not redeemable through the right intervention or the correct curriculum or enough philanthropic dollars.

Perfect, by the hand of God, but born into a world that can’t wait to ruin them.

That fraud started long before any of us were born. History’s editors took Cush out of Egypt and Egypt out of Africa. Stole the noses from the Sphinx. Painted over the deep browns on temple walls with ivory. Built a story so complete, so totalizing, that these kids are smeared before their first breath. Mischaracterized from day one.

The lie becomes the air they breathe, the assumption behind every low bar, every soft curriculum, every teacher who hugs but doesn’t teach.

For years, Black education was the cause célèbre. The issue that improved your LinkedIn biography. The ornament of performative progressives and double-tongued conservatives alike. But fashion changes. Today, it’s all the rage for careerists to scrub “Black” from their missions. Remove “Brown” from their websites. Delete “Justice” from grant requests to fickle program officers and duplicitous employers.

Which is exactly why these rooms matter.

The educators here aren’t paid enough money, but money isn’t their mission.

The community members, grandmothers and sisters and uncles and godfathers, show up on weekends, answering the call of duty.

The school leaders are fighting systems designed to fail their students while smiling about equity.

The poets and authors are here because somebody has to say the true thing out loud.

And the students themselves, the drumline kids warming up in the corner, the young people stacking lunch trays, they’re watching adults who refuse to bleach God’s mission or apologize for saying what needs saying.

These are my heroes. No capes. No fear. Just bone-deep belief that their work is familial, not professional.

That they know a thing or two about how these brains work, how these hearts mend, how to save intellectual development from the toxic compassion of institutions that mistake warmth for rigor.

I’m a guest here.

A supporter.

An advocate.

A baba in training.

I show up to make sure they have whatever the rest of us can provide, because people like this lead us all on the question of what we do to defend the Black mind.