Admissions kendra james book review5/22/2023 James graduated from Taft, attended Oberlin College, and subsequently spent a few years working in independent school admissions. In Admissions, James’s frank commentary and sense of humor provide a trenchant critique of a typical Catch-22: an elite institution wants diversity but doesn’t want order to be safe and welcoming for students of color. It wasn’t the academics that challenged her, but the microaggressions she and the other students of color experienced on a regular basis, the inconsistency with which certain school policies were applied, and the segregation that permeated Taft’s culture. The young James had visited the school during her father’s reunions, which gave her a sense of connection and familiarity, yet nothing prepared her-not her middle-class suburban life, her New Jersey public school education, or her upbringing by college-educated parents-for the ordeal of her three years at Taft. In the mid-2000s, Kendra James was the first African American legacy student at the Taft School, an upper-crust boarding school in Connecticut.
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