When my BFF and I got the same homework even though i was GT and she was not.
when the white kids were in the gifted class and the black kids were in the regular class. something like 95% of white kids were in the gifted program…
I realized that gifted does not mean gifted in everything. When I took algebra in 7th grade, I did not feel gifted.
I was labeled gifted and I think it’s correct, but as a kid, I didn’t understand what that really meant. I thought I was smarter than everyone else, when in reality, it means I am objectively really good at using the English language, creative, and also socially impaired.
I’m not better or worse than anyone else. I just have a different arrangement of talents. No one ever explained giftedness correctly to me, so I took it to mean smarter, but that’s not what it is really
About sophomore year in high school. I was in advanced history, English and science, but was placed in “regular” math. A lot of the advanced classes had all of the same kids in them. In the advanced classes I was the only black kid, and in the “regular” ones, it was mostly minority kids. Watching these two different groups I was confused why some of the kids in my math class weren’t in the advanced classes, because they were CLEARLY extremely intelligent, and why some of the kids in the advanced classes were there because they were OBVIOUSLY idiots. It didn’t take long to realize that I had gone to the “white” junior high with all of the “Advanced” kids, while the “regular” kids all seemed to come from the junior high with WAY more minorities. Growing up pretty privileged (mom and dad were both VERY well paid professionals), this was the first time I realized the “Gifted” moniker was total BS and pretty systemically racist.