Leonie Alder
Washington-Lee High School
Leonie Alder has felt the sting of casual racism in America—the suspicious glances of store clerks following her dark-skinned friends; the airport officials who inevitably ask whether her white Swiss father, her black mother and their two biracial children are flying together. She describes her parents as liberal and political—her father has worked on voter-registration drives and took her to Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration. Their whole family makes a point of watching and discussing political satire.
A first team All-District volleyball player who has played for Washington-Lee since she was in eighth grade, Alder was considering a career in sports management or player representation when she volunteered at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2016, helping delegates get to the right buses. She later founded her school’s Black Lives Matter club to expand students’ perspectives on the historical underpinnings of race relations in the U.S. (Guest speakers have included a Freedom Rider and the prosecutor in the Rodney King case.) She participated in the 2017 Women’s March and the March for Racial Justice, and lobbied the Arlington School Board to change the name of her high school, suggesting the board overhaul the way it selects school names. She finds it offensive, she says, to have to walk past portraits of Gen. Robert E. Lee, who supported the enslavement of her ancestors.
“I’m light-skinned, so I don’t have to live with the same issues or levels of discrimination that dark-skinned African-Americans have to deal with,” Alder says, “and I live in a safe community with parents who support me. I thought I should use the privilege I have as a platform to discuss these issues.”
Though Alder has volunteered for local political campaigns, she says she’s not interested in running for elected office. She prefers to stay behind the scenes, working with people as part of a team. Brown University, the alma mater of her mother and her aunt, admitted her as an early-decision student. She is considering law school in New York after college.