Throughout her years in the Central York School District, Princess Gabriel never sat in a classroom where a person of color stood at the chalkboard and lectured.
It didn’t seem that strange, for the most part, she remembers. All her neighbors were white, all her friends were white the lead characters in her favorite television shows were white.
As a student, she recalls reading only a handful of books that featured nonwhite perspectives titles such as To Kill a Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn come to mind. But even when those novels featured people of color, she realized, the books were often written by white authors who failed to portray the Black characters with depth and thoughtfulness.