Are Independent Schools for Black Children

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01/27/2013 20:49

Subject: Re:Are Independent Schools for Black Children

quote

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I am not sure what you mean by "elite," but both my husband and I are college educated and are working. We are not wealthy by any measure however. We have a nice but small house in Mont. County. We drive two old cars. We get some financial aid but also spend most of the rest of our income on tuition.

My experience has been that the independent schools work hard to recruit diverse classes. They bend over backwards to make sure that a minority child, once admitted, is given every opportunity to succeed. We have never felt that we were treated unfairly. On the contrary sometimes we think that our school is to sensitive to the race issue. For example, my son had some words with a student. It happens all the time. We feel that because the other boy was white, the school elevated it much more than it needed to be. This tiny incident turned into a major thing including sending the other boy before a discplinary board. In other words, the school wanted to make sure that they were protecting my son and wanted to make it clear to us that they had zero tolerance to such things. The thing about it was that apart from the other boys race the words between the 2 had nothing to do with race. yes the other boy started the argument and was being mean. we love the school and understand why they reacted this way but it was an overreaction. if both boys were white it simply would not have been such a big dieal. so to answer your question yes we feel that we have been treated fairly although if there is such a thing, maybe too fairly.

The only other thing I have to add is that some of our friends and family think that being in a basically all-white setting in a private school is somehow "selling out" or betraying our race, whatever the hell that means. It is true that my son has become very comfortable with some very rich kids, who are white or asian or spanish. to be honest i don't even notice such things anymore. It is hard to hide my disgust when somoene close to me says that my son is "acting white" or speaking like a white person. It angers me when my nephews teases my son about the fact that he has as many asian and white friends on Facebook as AA friends. Because of this private school experience he feels comfortable in what is basically another world, at least if your are talking to someone like my uncle. I'm not selling out. I am investing. I'm making sure that my son can do anything and go anywhere in life.

If you are looking at an independent school for your AA child I wish you the best of luck. Education is the key for your sons future and the future of our country and the DC private schools do a great job of providing opportunities for all to get a good education, graduate, go to college and succeed in life.

This was your major opportunity for a teachable moment. I hope you spoke at length to the school the way you have done here about your feelings that it was overblown and race was NOT the issue. If you didn't spend substantial time addressing this issue which might assuage this overreaction in the future, then you let slide an opportunity to educate emotionally, mentally, and racially the staffers so if the situation arises again, they won't look at it so much in black and white (pun intended).

PP , above sounds like she get's it ,but do others reading the thread realize that racism is racism and that when black people make fun of a black person for having white and asian friends those are racist statements. Imagine, if a white person looked at school photos of a white friend playing with a black and an asian kid and said, "man , what are you doing with that " block boy" or " asian kid" on your face book page. Instantly that would be regarded as racism, but when a black person says same thing they are simply defending not betraying your race" Excluding others from your group based on their race is : racism, for 500, Alex.