Reply to Diversity of schools - can this work both ways? Am I being unreasonable?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I truly value a diverse environment for my children. I want them to interact with and befriend people from all walks of life - economically, perspective, experience, racially and ethnically. Diversity isn't a buzzword for me - I truly see the value in it, across a variety of contexts.

My children are white. I would never send them to a school that was 95% white. I'm upper middle class, closer to upper class than middle class, I think (HHI - $200k). I would never send them to a school that was 95% UMC or wealthy.

However there is a flip side - there are many schools in DC that are &lt;1% white. Is it racist for me to be uncomfortable sending my kid there? It feels like a lot to ask of a 14 year old to be one of two white kids in his whole grade. No one wants their kid to stand out, or to feel like they don't belong.

Is that a bad thing? I'm honestly wondering. Particularly interested in the opinion of people of color - I know it's not your job to educate me on matters of race, but I really struggle with this one, so any help would be appreciated.

I know that schools on both ends of this (95% white, and &lt;1% white) are the result of policies of racism and discrimination that continue to this day, and I want to be a good citizen and a good neighbor and help to dismantle this. But there are much bigger societal forces at play. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this matter. [/quote]

Honestly I cannot relate as a mixed non-white person. I mean your child will see themselves in cartoons, movies, books, and any type of media. They have family and I’m sure many neighborhoods kids are white. Whiteness and white affirmation is everywhere.

White people can never experience being a POC to the extent we can, whiteness is celebrated even in schools that are 1% white because we still learn about white people and white history. Even a place like DC. Also unless you get a racist teacher there will still be things your child can relate to in the classroom, specifically race wise.

I think here what should really be unpacked is what does it mean to be white to a child? The reason POC children should be around other POC and not just white is because there is little media showing excellence, diverse roles, and the joy of being a POC. Look how much hate the fictional mermaid is getting just for being Black.

I find it highly odd when white parents are concerned about seeing whiteness, it is literally everywhere. 
[/quote]

This was true when we were kids but the landscape is different now for at least some subset of the population. Not saying white people experience what POC experience, but the racial landscape specifically for kids/families is really different. There is far less whiteness in kids media than there used to be, and especially in certain urban communities, media that very white is generally frowned upon. My kid (who is white, as am I) doesn't watch much television but what she does watch is very diverse and most of the character leads are POC. Of her books, it's mostly only the "classic" ones that have primarily white characters or even white main characters (assuming they have human characters or the context reads as culturally white, like Olivia where she's a pig but she's also pretty obviously white). Most of the more recently written books have very diverse characters and I'd say they are more likely to have a POC main character than not. The books they read at school are much more likely to have POC main characters, I'm sure by design given the racial makeup of the school.

Add in a predominately black elementary school and living in a majority POC city, and my kid's experience is actually not one that reinforces whiteness all the time. This will change as she gets older -- she knows the president is white (though she also knows the Vice President is a black woman and she knows about the Obamas). I know media and culture for older kids and adults is waaaaay whiter, like looking at the MCU universe or at the shows aimed at teen girls and young women. There's still more diversity than when I was a kid but I can see how whiteness tends to be centered more.

As a white parent of a white kid, I'm not freaking out about this, but I notice and so does my kid. We have absolutely had lots of conversations about how she has a different skin color than most of her friends. One interesting things is that because she has reddish blonde hair, she tends to get a lot of attention for her hair (not all complimentary) and she actually has experienced having kids and adults come up and touch her hair without her permission, which I know is something that POC in white spaces experience. I am not comfortable calling this "othering" in the sense that POC experience it, but it's also not the experience of someone who has their race and culture centered and celebrated.

My point is not to say my kid has it hard -- she doesn't. But the idea that my child is floating through life secure in the primacy of whiteness is false. I think experiences like what I've described can be hard for white parents to navigate because even as you recognize that your kid still obviously has white privilege in the world at large, you can also see how their minority status within the small pocket of the world where you live might impact their self-esteem and ability to make friends. Also, in our case, we aren't high SES. We are squarely MC (not in the fake DCUM sense but in the real sense, with an HHI of around 100k). Oh and we don't have a lot of extended family, so my kid doesn't have this network of white people that is making her feel included racially. She has three grandparents, a handful of aunts and uncles, and her cousins are actually half white and have mixed.

My observation is that we are not the only family in this situation. My kid isn't a white kid growing up in a predominantly white city or suburb surrounded by white culture. She does not see whiteness everywhere. As an adult with broader experience I know that this will change, but as a small child who knows she's different than most of her neighbors and friends, she doesn't know that yet. All she knows is that she is different from the other kids in a way that sometimes feels uncomfortable and isolating.[/quote]

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