Reply to A sensitive question about race?

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "A sensitive question about race?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]White parents are the ones who are uncomfortable with that situation, not anyone else. "Minorities" don't have the luxury of being uncomfortable with white people.

I'm sure OP will make a beeline for other white parents like they do at my school. It's kind of funny, it's so obvious.[/quote]

That is utter baloney.  I worked in place with mostly African American women, and they treated white women horribly.  Really, really horribly.  Some of the black women simply would not speak to any white woman just on principal.  Like, I would walk up and say hi, and they would act like I wasn't there.  One woman even told me that it wasn't personal; she just didn't like white people.  [/quote]

PP, how does your experience negate the validity of the prior PP's?  Why would you call it "utter baloney," as if the truth of your experience means that hers can't also be true?

FWIW, I'm a black woman, and I've never engaged in or witnessed such behavior towards white women in professional settings.  Perhaps I've seen such snubbing in my high school in the South, where racial tensions occasionally flared up, but not since then.  I wonder where you work.  I'm not saying this hasn't happened to you, but I hope you don't paint all black women with the same broad brush.

As to the OP's original question: I wouldn't worry too much about the majority minority setting per se.  However, I'd think long and hard about the greatschools rating of 2 (and we know greatschool ratings aren't everything, but still--2 is really low).  My child attends a predominantly AA school with a greatschools score of 8, and in speaking with parents of some of her white classmates, they're having a fantastic experience in the school. Some I've spoken with in depth about racial issues have so far not encountered any issues in this regard.  However, most of my child's classmates of all races are from similar, middle-class backgrounds, so there is less of a gap between students of different races in this regard.  As a middle/upper middle class family, we'd definitely hesitate about putting our child in a '2' school, particularly if my child would be in the racial minority in addition to being from a different SES background from most of the students--it just compounds any possible 'odd one out' difficulties, IMO.[/quote]

I was the PP.  The other PP said white parents are the only ones who are uncomfortable with other races, and that minorities are never uncomfortable with white people.  I was simply pointing out that that isn't true - it was the other PP who was speaking in absolutes.

I have experienced this AA hostility toward non-blacks in two different professional environments.  One was the federal government (2 different offices, actually), and the other was a school in the DC area.  I would definitely describe those federal government offices as a racially hostile environment.  AA women were in the majority there, and the prejudice against non-black people (not just white) was extreme and overt.

In the school it was less so, because the AA women were just a few women, and not all the AA women in the school were like that.  I really don't know what would motivate people to act like that or adopt that attitude toward people in their workplace.  I find it hard to believe you have never met anyone like that or seen it happen.  I don't paint all black women with the same brush - I know plenty of black women who aren't like that.  I really don't understand this phenomena, but I attribute mainly to a kind of grown-up mean girl thing, perhaps bolstered by racial issues, but no doubt these women would be cliquey in any skin.[/quote]

So PP, the issue was really a group of grown-up Mean Girls who happened to be AA. They excluded others who happened to be white and just one said that she didn't like white people but you decided they all were racists? [/quote]

Riiiiight....and that group of white girls who won't be friends with black girls, and won't even speak to black girls, that's just fine too, yes?  You live in a fantasy land (called denial).  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics