Guest In A Strange House: The Racialicious Review Of The Prep School Negro

By Guest Contributor Kendra James

Andre Robert Lee’s documentary, The Prep School Negro, about the experience of black students at an elite Philadelphia prep school, begins in the West Elm neighborhood of Philadelphia, which he refers to as not the most dangerous neighborhood but still not the safest.

“Everyone says I got a Golden Ticket,” says Lee, narrating the introduction. When he was nine, his father left the family, leaving his mother to raise both him and his sister; his intelligence and penchant for talking and reading rather than fighting or playing sports marked him as different from a young age. Though he would come to receive a free tuition at Germantown Friends, he says, ”there was still a great cost. As soon as I set foot in [Germantown Friends] I started to go in a different direction from my family.”

Courtesy: theprepschoolnegro.org

His tends to be the more common experience–or at least what one hears as the common experience–of black students in prep schools. In the world of secondary school education the term diversity always seems to unofficially go hand-in-hand with scholarship and financial aid. There’s an idea that these schools swoop in with money and “save” poor black children by enclosing them inside these centuries-old brick walls. No one talks about what happens after they’re saved, both inside those supposedly protective walls or back home with their families, or the kids who aren’t being ‘saved’ at all. Lee’s film gives an honest look beyond the staged-looking pictures of diversity that these schools present.

“It’s a magical place on many levels, and it’s a difficult place on many different levels.” says one of his former teachers, Joan Countryman, whowas also Germantown’s first black graduate. She describes attending the school as being a “guest in a strange house.” It’s a wonderfully succinct and apt description of being thrown into the prep school world, no matter what your personal or socioeconomic backgrounds are.

“The assimilation process is very, very difficult,” explains 1989 graduate Marcella Travagline. “No one tried to get to know me … I came and felt invisible, and still do, and that’s why no one even remembers I was here.” Lee admits that even with his popularity, he still felt lonely the entire time he attended the school. Despite receiving the same caliber of education and having access to the same resources as other students at the school, the “guest” mentality is still present, and becomes more obvious when you realize that the majority of people you were at school with for three or four years don’t even remember you were there.

Though, while they may not remember you individually, the whole–the splash of melanin in an otherwise white community–is enough to garner notice. The idea that, in some respects, students of color are clumped together in one large amorphous blob is one of the reasons I appreciated listening to the interviews Lee conducted for the film. I remember the feeling during my own prep-school experience, wondering whether or not anyone will remember if you, individually, were at the school. On the other, you know that as a group people certainly remember because the group stuck out. The group was often seen as homogenous: brown kids who all came from the same background and all sat at the same table in the dining hall for meals. However, as Lee shows us throughout Prep School, that isn’t ever the case.

In addition to his own former classmates, Lee also interviews several of Germantown’s current black students, who themselves come from diverse backgrounds which make for divergent experiences within and outside of school.

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