My child is in a northern school that is part of a cohort of independent schools in our area “coincidentally” founded in the years surrounding desegregation and bussing in the public school system.

There are grandchildren and children of alumni from that time and this small group feels a lot of ownership over the school- in fact, they consider it “their” neighborhood school and have been resistant to financial aid, transportation, etc for 2 decades.

It took me a while to understand why they felt that way. I was searching news articles for a different historical reason and it was really upsetting to uncover the school’s true history and some disgusting coded comments people made at the time. My hometown handled desegregation very differently so it had never dawned on me that my kid’s school was founded to avoid desegregation.

There are a lot of schools like this once you dig. Because of the school community’s cultural issues that still linger and out of disgust at the entire situation, we are weighing a school switch next year.

If our parent and alumni community was a bit more evolved I would feel less upset about its history- but unfortunately it isn’t as distant as I wish it was.

What about the sex abuse scandal at Maret?

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Anonymous wrote:Do not pull your kids out of a school they’re happy at for something that happened before they were born.

Yes.

And yes, boarding schools, by their very nature, were prone to abuses in the past (and you need to be careful about abuses in the present). This is nothing surprising either.

No reason to pull your kids out if they're happy and safe.

I agree with the above. You live in the South. Hard to avoid very awful things that happened in the past... Focus on what is happening there NOW. If your kids are happy and thriving and that is the only school option you feel/know they could get a good education then I would never consider switching. HOWEVER I would be very mindful and purposeful to make sure I am including things in my family life that demonstrate inclusivity and an acknowledgment of past history and how that has negatively affected African Americans. I would not leave these conversations and actions up to the school. I mean that you make a point to have a lifestyle that includes others who appear "different" from you in your social circle, I would not join a country club that is predominately white for instance, and learn about that part of history as a family, as age appropriate.

Virginia is in the south. Most people just forget that.

In fact, Virginia has the absolute worst history of school desegregation and has the distinction of being the only place in the entire US where a country closed schools long term [5 years] rather than integrate. The previous Wikipedia link about segregation academies explains it. What the state of VA did to ensure integration didn't happen is truly appalling. People living in NoVa are largely ignorant of the history of the state.

Flint Hill in Fairfax, VA is one of the schools that came out of the massive resistance and was supported by tuition grants provided by the state - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_Hill_School

There are more than a few Va private schools that were founded in the 1971-73 period. Many of them have done impressive gymnastics to try to mask WHY they were founded during that time period.

not just Virginia. What year’s were the Heights and Mater Die founded? They both have far less Blacks than the most of the other schools talked about on DCUM. Maybe it’s just coincidence.

I don’t know about Mater Dei, but one of the founders of The Heights was African American https://heights.edu/in-memoriam-eddie-smith/

Anonymous wrote:I had to swallow hard on the issue of the proximity of Woodrow Wilson’s rotting corpse but I guess I knew about that going in. That monster should be dug up and put somewhere outside of a house of worship.

Anyone who claims they would even contemplate rejecting NCS or STA (or even Beauvoir) on the basis that Woodrow Wilson is buried at the Cathedral is clowning themselves. It's just not credible. And the comment about it is clearly a humblebrag. Signed, a graduate of the Cathedral schools.

Anonymous wrote:Just like the question says. Not in the DMV anymore, but we learned something distasteful about the kids' school. They love it and are doing well, but apparently this information is well-known in town, and I'm worried about what it says about us.

Would you pull your whole family out of the US because of its shameful history with slavery ? If you aren’t willing to leave the country because of its history then you shouldn’t pull your kids out of their school for the same reason.

Anonymous wrote:Flint Hill was established so that white families did not have to send their kids to school with black kids after schools became integrated.

No, Flint Hill was established to generate revenue. They did however pander the the whites that didn’t want to integrate. Flint Hill now has Black kids and Black staff. Don’t know why you keep picking on Flint Hill when there are plenty of schools founded during the same period that still don’t have Black students or staff. Check out some of the catholic schools like O’Connell, Ireton, the Heights, Good Counsel, etc. why do you think these schools where founded. Many of them still don’t have many Black kids other than the athletes.

Flint Hill was established so that white families did not have to send their kids to school with black kids after schools became integrated.

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Levittowns has nothing to do with what you're talking about. They were mass produced cheap new suburbs and were not built to avoid desegregation. There's also only four Levittowns, and one is in Puerto Rico.

Yes, they were. They specifically prohibited AAs from buying.

So did just about all new suburbs. Levittowns were built specifically to provide affordable suburban housing for people leaving cramped apartments in the cities. They were not different in that regard. But they were not built to avoid black buyers or to be sanctuaries for people fleeing black neighborhoods. Distinct difference.

But they were - they were built to NOT be sold to Black buyers. They were specifically designed to be suburbs for White families.

The US in those days existed for white people. White Americas, for the most part, did not think about black people except to make sure they didn't live near black people (easy when the population was 85% white and 15% black and the latter heavily concentrated in a few key areas). What you are missing is that the purpose of Levittowns wasn't to be an all white neighborhood. They were not distinctive in that regard because most white neighborhoods were by default, whether through custom or real estate practice or economics or legal, all white neighborhoods. If there were 20 reasons why the Levittowns were built, one out of the 20 would be to avoid living near blacks. But they were not built specifically to avoid blacks.

Maybe there were other reasons, but part of the plan inside these planned communities was that there would be no Blacks and Blacks were not welcome.

Surely the poster with the Kendi Racial Studies major can find a better place to work than on DCUM on Memorial Day weekend.