If you’re a minority or parent to a mixed race child

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are a black/white mixed race family. First 3 kids in private I’m DC so I had an unrealistic belief that all environments would be similar. When our 4th came along, needed a larger house and we moved to a very white area of N Arlington and put DC in a very white public school. I genuinely never gave race a thought. I’m not American so that is probably why.

I was soon sadly disabused of my former belief. My child was miserable. I would not say the children were intrinsically racist but having just one child of color in the class (and clearly non in their broader lives) meant all their questions and weird notions were concentrated on my DC. DC became so self conscious of race which led to self hatred. DC had barely any play dates and felt very isolated. I have 3 other kids in 2 other schools with which to compare and I was and still am shocked by the difference.
Pulled DC out (too late in my opinion) and forked out for private and a lot of the damage is being reversed.

In terms of the neighborhood, compared with our previous which was a little more diverse and very very friendly, after 4 years only one one family speaks to us and their child happens to be at the same school as my other children. No invitations have been reciprocated and we have given up and socialize mainly with parents at the private schools in DC. Our friends in N Arlington are all from previous neighborhood and all mixed couples (white/East Asian, white/Latin American, white/SE Asian).

There is a school bus stop just outside our house and I once found a wallet belonging to one of the kids across the street. I took it over and the husband answered the door. I handed the wallet over and before I could open my mouth to explain he gets in my face and starts screaming at me asking why I had his son’s wallet, where I’d found it. I was too stunned to respond and as I stood there open mouthed his wife came and recognized me as the across the street neighbor and explained the same to her husband who went bright red and started spluttering something unintelligible. I was so sad as I was with the DC who had had the terrible experience at the public school (we were out walking the dogs).
I never ever gave race a thought when choosing our house but, sad to say, I should have.
Choose wisely OP.

My N Arlington experience was not quite this extreme but I felt similarly excluded by neighbors and daycare moms for not being white. The worst experience was at our in home daycare when the moms were talking *right in front of me* about one of the children's birthday party and it was clear that my DD was the only one currently at the daycare (6 kids) and previously at the daycare (at least 4 other kids mentioned) that was not invited. Everyone else was white. Funny enough, daycare provider was the same race as me.

PP here.
I had a similar experience at my 4th child’s school when they were in kindergarten. I’d join in conversations and everyone was perfectly pleasant but I noticed that if they arranged a meeting with or without kids I would be excluded. If they were introducing everyone in the group to a new comer they would not introduce me. It took me a while to piece things together. Because that was our first year in the Arlington system I assumed most of them knew each other previously and only later found out that most of us had met at the same time with the exception of a few who had been at the same pre schools. Mine had been at a pre school in DC.
I noticed also that other parents somehow “gave me instructions to perform menial tasks“ if I was one of the volunteers for a class party or the ice cream social Etc and I think earlier on they thought I was more than likely the nanny, hence the exclusion? I don’t know. By the time they realized I was a parent, when my white husband showed up with me a few times, friendships had been formed and try as I might I could not make headway to breaking in.
I am genuinely not paranoid. It took a white friend of mine to help connect the dots for me. Also at the time I’d had 3 other kids in schools for up to 9 years so I was not new to American school environments. In addition the majority of my friends in my other kids’ schools are white so color and race had never been an issue before then. For a long time questioned whether I misconstrued things at that school but having spoken to the school social worker, other parents in different N Arlington public schools, my neighborhood and that school are notorious for what my child and I and experienced at the school and what we are experiencing in the neighborhood.

This sounds awful. So sorry to hear you and your child and the rest of your family have gone through this.

[Anonymous]

Op, I’m Latina (born and raised in the US) and DH is white. He wanted to live in close-in Bethesda while I was unhappy with the lack of diversity in the public schools. I was treated really badly in school (literally called racist names like wetback and spic by my classmates and not treated well by my teachers) and did not want my kids to be those kids in their classes, as the majority of Bethesda interacts with Latinos as their service workers.

We tried our highly rated public school and decided to move to private school. I didn’t like how parents are defensive about how our school was so diverse without recognizing the lack of African American students and US Latinos and Asian Americans (lots of international diversity, that was true). The parent group which focused on diversity met at 10 am on Friday mornings (when I was working), which signaled to me that they didn’t really care if parents were involved.

Private school has more racial and ethnic diversity. Economic diversity did not exist at our public school, and probably not at our private school either. My child doesn’t have many other Latino kids in their class, but has kids who are African-American and Asian (also has international kids, but they aren’t the only source of diversity). And the school talks about race and skin color more explicitly - I was so pleased my young ES child came home talking about the biological underpinnings of skin color. The parent group on diversity meets outside of working hours.

Anyway, if private is an option for you, pick a neighborhood you like/convenient, and then you have an option other than the public school.