What Jesuit education taught a Black kid from the Bronx about finding your voice and vocation

May 18, 2026 - 20:56

Growing up as a Black kid in the Bronx, I walked into a Jesuit school not knowing what to expect. The buildings were old, the hallways smelled like floor wax and ambition, and the teachers wore black robes that seemed to belong to another century. I thought they would tell me what to think. Instead, they kept asking me one question, over and over, in different ways: What is your education for?

That question changed everything. It was not about grades or test scores. It was not about getting into a good college so I could get a good job. It was deeper than that. The Jesuits believed that learning had to serve something bigger than yourself. They did not care if I memorized dates or formulas. They cared if I could look at the world and ask who was being left out. They cared if I could speak up when something was wrong.

I remember sitting in a classroom and realizing that my voice mattered. Not because I was the smartest kid in the room, but because I had something to say that no one else could say. My teachers did not hand me a script. They handed me a mirror. They showed me that my background, my neighborhood, my family's struggles were not obstacles to overcome. They were the raw material of my vocation.

What they gave me was not a map. It was a compass. They did not tell me where to go. They taught me how to ask the right questions. And the most important one was always this: What are you going to do with what you have been given? That question has never stopped following me.