Menlo News January 17, 2018

Antonio Lopez ’12 challenges Menlo community to talk about racial inequality

The Marshall Scholar said, “I’m not here to talk about how Menlo prepared me for college.”

Antonio Lopez '12 speaks during assembly at Menlo School. Photo by Pete Zivkov.

Antonio Lopez ’12 spoke at a Menlo Upper School assembly on January 16 about inequality and the work required to combat systemic pressures placed on minority students.

Lopez repeatedly challenged Menlo students, faculty, and administration to have frank conversations, at one point saying, “I’m not here to talk about how Menlo prepared me for college.” Instead, he asked, “How often do you think about your racial identity?” He asked if those in the audience care about race and how race operates in the School community, let alone in the wider world, and how much.

Quoting from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Lopez urged listeners to consider if they are helping to create the “positive peace” King sought, or if they are more like the “white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”

Near the end of his talk, Lopez read his poem, “First Time I Was Called A Spic,” which he was kind enough to share and you can read here.

After graduating from Menlo, Lopez attended Duke University and graduated in 2016 with a double B.A. in global cultural studies and African and African-American studies. He then began a master’s program in fine arts at Rutgers University. In December, Lopez was named a Marshall Scholar — one of only 43 nationwide this year. He plans to use the scholarship to attend the University of Oxford.

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