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[quote=Anonymous]No recommendation, just commiseration.

I'm white and worked at a very established girls' sleep away camp in Maine. I had always imagined sending my DD there, but she is mixed race and the first time she attended a prospective camper session, she had a total freakout when we got home.

What I remembered as "diverse" during my time was not. It was really a handful of girls from families of color- literally 2-3 girls- plus a larger group of Asian girls who in hindsight were the last of the big generation of Chinese adoptees.

My DD called out the prospective camper slide show and videos the second we got in the car and said "none of those girls look like me and they keep showing the other 3 girls over and over again." But it wasn't just the optics- as an adult and parent it was easier to pick up on the fact that you could be a diverse camper there yet still not belong, which I didn't understand when I was a much young adult and counselor.

The belonging thing is an impossible hurdle when you have generations that have been going there and extensive rules and traditions and inside jokes that are passed down that are hard to penetrate.

It broke my heart that my DD wouldn't have the sleep away camp experience I'd hoped she'd have, but it made me feel even worse to think that I'd been part of a place that could so easily make my DD feel like she didn't belong before she even got there.[/quote]

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