Nathaniel Garland

Gymnasium used to start at a gym.  Everybody took gym in those days, and so you found out that you could run and jump and do everything that everybody else could do. And that was a sense of equality without any words being spoken, and then you got decent grades in school.  I found that some kids -- it’s not that they can’t learn, but in certain environments, they’re intimidated, and their learning juices doesn’t kick in.  In fact, it numbs them, and I’ve been in that way myself.  It’s almost like an unknown fear just won’t let you use your mental capacity, and I think that’s what happens sometimes when people are thrust into environments where they feel uncomfortable.  It’s like they don’t use their full capacity.  Once you get to the point of where you can do it -- I gave this explanation once when I was in one of my classes.  I was in the ninth grade, and the lady said, “Nathaniel, why do you act the way you do?”  And I said, “Well, whenever you’re feared and hated any time you walk in somewhere,” I said, “it starts to wear on you.”  And she said, “What are you talking about?”  I said, “Well, this black skin I have?  I didn’t ask for it.”  I said, “But yet everywhere I go, I’m judged by it,” I said, “and it bothers me.”  And she just sat and looked at me.  She couldn’t comprehend what I was talking about and simply because she couldn’t be me.  She didn’t walk a mile in my shoes, and I guess because of the fact that she had never encountered it, and I was probably the first black student she’d ever taught, it was foreign to her as well.