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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My child is at a "diverse" school (if what you mean by diversity is a lot of people who are not like me or my child). 65% hispanic, 10% filipino, 10% white, the rest is other races. Half of the kids are English learners, 70% FARMS. 
No, I didn't send my kid there for diversity. It is a neighborhood school and we settled in the neighborhood long before schools were on our radar, so I thought I would give it a shot. 
Would I be happy if all the FARMS people up and left? Sure! Would I be happy to have more kids at school who look and think like my kid? Heck yeah! But so far it's working out fairly well as it is; it's a 7 minute walk from our house, the principal is great, the teachers are great, my child performs above grade level from what I see. 
The upside has been that everyone knows my child and me, just because I am involved in the PTA, my kid is white (because there are not too many whites), and because I am a decent parent :) Also, the kid is left alone when he cannot "perform" and most of the time, he catches up soon (he was below grade level in K, on grade level in 1st, now in 2nd he is above grade level). He is just a kid who doesn't perform well in a competitive environment, but does well when he is one of the strongest students. 
The downside has been that it is difficult to hang out with anyone outside school. Everyone pretty much keeps to themselves. Also, there are fewer extracurriculars, but when the school has them, they are usually free or low cost. 
I am just a person who prefers to work with what I have been given, so it is working out for our family. If something changes, I will of course reconsider.

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Do you mean non-white Hispanic or total Hispanic? Hispanic is not a race. You can be white or black and be Hispanic. Not sure where you're getting your stats from. [/quote]
I have no idea! I got my stats from Greatschools :) Most of the spanish speaking students in our school don't look white to me. But I really haven't given it much thought. [/quote]

PP,  what's your ethnic background?  If you are not WASP, then at some point in our history you were not white either.  See Nell Erving Painter's " A History of White People." [/quote]

What does any of this matter?

We are so hung up on race and culture that we're moving nowhere FAST!

And now we're immediately judged on skin color.  My friend and I are both teachers - Italian-Americans.  She didn't grow up with the language; I did.  She is, however, so olive-complected that she's approached by all people who attempt to engage her in conversation in another language.  I am fair-skinned and never approached by anyone who is "ethnic."  This makes it easier for her in the classroom, too, as kids immediately react to her differently, too.  We share the same values and teaching styles, but the trust factor issue isn't a concern for her.

She checks off the white box, too!

sad that we're still making assumptions based on skin color

And yes, [b]Italians [/b]at one point [b]were in internment camps[/b] and [b]even lynched in the South[/b], as they, too, had to follow Jim Crow Laws.  not the case any longer

We are a very confused country with no culture or even a shared language.  [b]So how do we move forward[/b]?  [/quote]

Freakin' Guineas were in internment camps b/c we were at war with their homeland, just like the Japanese. They were never subject to Jim Crow.  Those that were lynched were lynched in New Orleans following the murder of the police chief allegedly by Italian gangsters.

We cannot move forward until this country acknowledges and accepts the legacy of slavery and racism.

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You're calling me a guinea?  You need to read up on some obscure research that never made it mainstream - and that was done on purpose.

Tu sei un cafone.

http://www.faculty.umb.edu/lawrence_blum/courses/232_12/readings/guglielmo_no_color_barrier.pdf[/quote]

It's all good man!  I read the article, and my takeaway, which is reiterated both at the beginning of the article and at the end is that Italian- Americans, like every other European immigrant group, had "white privilege" from the day they arrived in America and it is somewhat inaccurate for many to contrast their experience of "pulling themselves up" by their bootstraps" with the experience of African Americans who have been here 400 plus years and were enslaved and discriminated against in ways no other group - especially white European immigrants - can ever claim.  Shall I quote the relative passages from the article for you?

I will give you another article to read - this one by the great American author James Baldwin entitled the "American Dream and the American Negro."  The African - American was robbed of over two hundred years of their own labor - labor that could have built family wealth passed inter-generationally that was simply stolen.  Baldwin very powerfully points this out:  "From a very literal point of view, the harbors and the ports and the railroads of the country--the economy, especially in the South--could not conceivably be what they are if it had not been (and this is still so) for cheap labor. I am speaking very seriously, and this is not an overstatement: I picked cotton, I carried it to the market, I built the railroads under someone else's whip for nothing. For nothing.  The Southern oligarchy which has still today so very much power in Washington, and therefore some power in the world, was created by my labor and my sweat and the violation of my women and the murder of my children. This in the land of the free, the home of the brave. None can challenge that statement. It is a matter of historical record."

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-dream.html
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