Black Genius Begins Early: What Early Childhood Teaches Us About the American Experiment
A colleague shared Carter Rankin’s reflection, “MacKenzie Scott Is Drilling for Black Genius.” As an early childhood educator, I read it as more than an argument about HBCUs, leadership, or institutional investment. It raises a question that begins much earlier:
What happens when a child’s brilliance is recognized, nurtured, connected to opportunity, and eventually allowed to shape the institutions around them?
Black genius does not begin when a university accepts a student, an employer hires someone, or a funder writes a check. It is already present in the young child who asks an unexpected question, solves a problem differently, creates something new, organizes other children, or notices what adults have overlooked. Our responsibility is not to manufacture that genius. It is to recognize it early and build environments in which it can grow.
Resilience Should Never Be Required
My faith also shapes how I understand this responsibility. Jesus declared, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). Psalm 37:11 similarly promises, “But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.” Meekness should not be confused with weakness or passive acceptance. It is disciplined strength. The ability to exercise power without becoming cruel, remain grounded without surrendering, and lead without diminishing others.
Our history, however, must not be romanticized. What was intended to harm Black people did harm Black people. Oppression disrupted families, restricted opportunities, denied wealth, and caused trauma. It did not create Black genius. That genius existed before the harm. Black Americans nevertheless drew upon faith, knowledge, creativity, relationships, and collective determination to move forward. We transformed painful experiences into lessons, institutions, scholarship, advocacy, culture, and leadership.
Early childhood teaches us an important distinction - resilience is a response to hardship, not a justification for allowing hardship to continue. We should never require children to suffer to prove that they are strong.
Black Americans Have Already Helped Transform America
Black Americans have not been waiting for an opportunity to contribute to America’s transformation. Black educators, caregivers, families, scholars, organizers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders have long helped shape how this country understands learning, freedom, leadership, culture, and collective responsibility.
The Civil Rights Movement did more than improve conditions for Black Americans. Its ideas, strategies, and sacrifices widened access and opportunity for numerous communities. This does not mean Black Americans accomplished progress alone, nor does it discount the contributions of people from other racial and cultural backgrounds. It means that Black leadership has repeatedly been central to America’s movement toward its stated ideals. The question is not whether Black Americans can lead transformation. We already have.
The more urgent questions are Who recognizes that leadership? Who invests in it? Who owns the institutions through which it operates? Who receives credit for the knowledge produced? And who determines how that knowledge will be used?
A 250-Year Experiment in Diversity
In 2026, the United States reached 250 years since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. America is not the world’s only diverse nation, but it remains one of the most visible and influential experiments in whether people from many cultures, races, religions, languages, and histories can build a shared society.
America is often described as a melting pot. Yet early childhood education reminds us that belonging should not require us to be the same. Children should not have to surrender their home languages, cultures, family identities, or ways of knowing to be accepted. A healthy community does not “melt” differences until they disappear. It creates enough shared purpose for people to live and learn together while respecting what makes each person and community distinct.
Across America’s first 250 years, abolitionists, civil-rights advocates, progressive reformers, educators, families, and ordinary citizens sacrificed to expand the meaning of freedom and belonging. Yet, the period from 2013 through early 2025 brought significant changes in national approaches to voting oversight, college admissions, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
People interpret those legal and policy changes differently. The nonpartisan lesson is that national priorities and protections can change quickly. Progress is not permanent simply because it was once achieved. From an early childhood perspective, this demonstrates why values must be translated into durable systems. A commitment to inclusion cannot depend on one teacher, director, funder, court decision, or administration. It must be reflected in professional preparation, curriculum, family engagement, funding, leadership development, organizational policy, and accountability.
Learn from Everyone and Build Something Better
Black self-determination does not require rejecting everything created by white people or white-led institutions. Nor should we assume that every practice within Black institutions, or any community, is automatically effective simply because it is familiar. No race or culture owns every good idea.
We should learn from what, white-led institutions do well, just as we should learn from Black, Indigenous, Latino, Asian, immigrant, international, and other cultural communities. We can study how different groups organize capital, preserve knowledge, educate children, sustain families, develop leaders, and build institutions across generations. We should take what is ethical, effective, and progressive wherever it is found. We can then combine those lessons with the knowledge our own history and communities have produced.
Learning from others does not require copying them uncritically. We do not need to reproduce systems based on domination, exclusion, exploitation, or disrespect. Our goal should not be to replace one racial hierarchy with another.
Early childhood offers a different model. In a strong learning community, each child receives what they need to thrive. Leadership is exercised as responsibility. Differences are treated as strengths. Problems are addressed through reflection and repair. One child’s success does not require another child’s diminishment. That is the kind of world we have the ability to build. We do not have time merely to maintain early childhood systems that continue to undervalue educators, limit teacher judgment, overlook family childcare, and leave many talented people without pathways to leadership or ownership. We must accelerate our organization - connecting research to practice, experienced educators to emerging leaders, community knowledge to policy, and Black talent to capital and ownership.
MacKenzie Scott’s investments invite us to consider what becomes possible when Black institutions receive substantial resources and the freedom to determine how those resources are used. Early childhood must ask a related question. What could Black-led early learning organizations, educators, researchers, and entrepreneurs build if their expertise were trusted and adequately financed?
Black genius is not an undeveloped American commodity waiting for someone else to discover it. It is a human and community inheritance that begins in childhood. Our work is to ask better questions about whose genius is recognized, build leaders who can exercise power without reproducing harm, and create systems in which every child and community can flourish.
That is how we honor the legacy behind us while protecting the possibilities ahead.
About the Author
Victoria Long-Coleman, Ph.D., MBA is the Founder and Principal of Early Childhood Innovations. An early childhood educator, leadership, coach, author, speaker, she focuses on strengthening educators, developing leaders, and translating research into practical approaches that improve early childhood systems.
Early Childhood Innovations
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ASK Better Questions. BUILD Better Leaders. CREATE Better Systems.
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