Selective Exceptionalism

Institutions such as independent schools here in New England, pride themselves—matter of fact, bet their very reputations—on their ability to provide students and their families the highest quality service.  Not just the highest, but the highest of the highest—that is to say, an “elite” education.  Exceptionalism is what such “elite” schools market and sell, and they do so in nearly every facet of their programming, from the courses offered, to the strength of their athletics, extra-curriculars, and assumed social networks. 

Yet, historically, when it comes to the failure of such schools to excel in matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion, these same institutions quickly and conveniently retreat to the mean, using the very status-quo shunned in all other aspects of their brand as an excuse for underperforming. One such example—tired and worn—would have school officials rationalize the existence of the racism and prejudice occurring on their own campuses merely as symptom of some larger ailment plaguing society as a whole.  So, where such schools, by nearly every other metric and facet of their existence, extol exceptionalism relative to the status quo, in fact staking their name and brand on such separation, they conveniently retreat with an embrace of the pack when it comes to issues of race and the racism occurring within their communities. 

Schools are just like any other American sovereign body in that they are free to be exceptional and as elite as they desire.  However, applying their pursuit of exceptionalism to any other aspect of its operations save the pursuit of racial equity, preserves the advantage for white people who thus remain primary recipients of the delivered quality.  Selective exceptionalism, when applied to race, becomes merely another mechanism for maintaining white people as the predominant beneficiaries of high quality, elite goods and services rendered, perverting what is otherwise elite into yet another form of white elitism, which, as an educational extract, reaps uniquely damaging effects upon society.