Anonymous wrote:OP, this has been an interesting thread. In the end, we are looking at schools in less diverse areas (Whitman, Churchill) and hope that things have changed. If things go badly, we can always move or consider private, both costly options. I hope that I will be more in tune to what my kids will be experiencing that my parents did.
My fear is that the whites who live in these areas might very well be there because they want to avoid certain demographics. So this might be a select crowd. I expect that the prom will be an issue for DD. I hope that I can find someone from outside of the school to help us with that. It will be a long way away, but you have to think in advance.
I knew one woman who went to a nearly all white DC girls Catholic school back in the 70s and 80s. I honestly believe that she might have been the "only one". She did well academically, but in all other ways, she was a mess. Even white people have told me about how she seems totally screwed up WRT race. She will blurt out that she is not that dark, unsolicited. She married an Asian man and talks nonstop about how straight and long her daughters hair is. You get it.
All I can do is pray that my kids will not suffer like that.

I'm joining in this conversation even though I'm white because I can confirm, sadly, that this bolded statement may be true. I live in a more diverse cluster and frequently hear about white parents who are moving to the areas you mention because our schools here are too "sketchy" or "urban" or some unfortunate euphemism for our school being more nonwhite. That said, schools are big and communities are big and that doesn't mean everyone your child encounters will feel that way. Best of luck.

OP, this has been an interesting thread. In the end, we are looking at schools in less diverse areas (Whitman, Churchill) and hope that things have changed. If things go badly, we can always move or consider private, both costly options. I hope that I will be more in tune to what my kids will be experiencing that my parents did.
My fear is that the whites who live in these areas might very well be there because they want to avoid certain demographics. So this might be a select crowd. I expect that the prom will be an issue for DD. I hope that I can find someone from outside of the school to help us with that. It will be a long way away, but you have to think in advance.
I knew one woman who went to a nearly all white DC girls Catholic school back in the 70s and 80s. I honestly believe that she might have been the "only one". She did well academically, but in all other ways, she was a mess. Even white people have told me about how she seems totally screwed up WRT race. She will blurt out that she is not that dark, unsolicited. She married an Asian man and talks nonstop about how straight and long her daughters hair is. You get it.
All I can do is pray that my kids will not suffer like that.

I know that many ad companies will not let AA girls model unless they have natural hair. But that said, they tend to gravitate towards the mixed girls with the ringlets.

OP, there is some evidence lurking that the better the schools, the better AA kids do ACADEMICALLY. The problem is that there is the emotional fallout...

16:46 poster here. My oldest daughter who I actually think could handle an "only" situation has the same hair issue as your daughter, and my daughter is 9. She wants her hair straight. I show her magazine pictures of black child models who look incredibly cute with their curly "fros" and she is like, "No Way!" She looks adorable with her hair like that, but in her mind it has to be straight.

When we were in the south, her best friend was a 6 year old white girl who was skinny as a rail and obsessed over her weight. My relatively thin daughter began to obsess over her weight too. It drove me crazy. I found out that many very young white girls obsess over their weight (at least in the community where we were) Now that we're back in DC where she sees and is friends with many "thick" black girls who don't have any issue with their size, that worry has been minimized--as has the "white dolls are prettier" thing.

This is why I insist on diversity when it comes to schools for my children. I personally don't want them to attend an all black, or all white, or all anything school. In their current school (DC charter) they talk about where everyone is from and they share their different cultures. It's been a wonderful learning experience for them. My 3 children have friends of all colors now and they seem much more comfortable with their African American heritage than when we were in an all white setting.

I can totally relate to PP. My youngest DD is one of two AA in her Kindergarten class, the other is a boy. She has curly hair and never wants to wear it out, begs for us to straighten it, etc. I recently overheard a conversation she had with her older brother about heaven. She said, if I can wish for whatever I want in heaven, I'm going to wish for white skin and long, straight hair." My stomach sank.

I grew up with black-nationalist parents (both from D.C. but think Panther party, roots-reggae band jam sessions, and dyshikis (sp?)). I have a huge supply of "black is beautiful" speeches that I can fire off at any given moment. It's just a matter of reiterating these messages often enough to counterbalance the inundation of messages that reinforce and reiterate American society's preference for "whiteness."

OP I understand your concern. I have 3 children. We used to live in an all white southern neighborhood and the kids went to a predominately white pre school. My son--around the age of 3.5--started making eye brow raising statements and exhibiting behavior that made me go..."hmmm". He would only make friends with the white kids. If he said a girl was pretty, she was always a white girl, which is fine but I started to notice a pattern. One day he was looking at his sister's two dolls. One white, one black. He pointed to the white one and said she was pretty. I said, "What about the other one?" He said, "She's ugly. " I asked why. He said because, "brown is bad". It broke my heart.

To this day I'm not sure what happened to start him down this track of thinking and it continued for some time. When we moved back to DC in 2010, his pre-K class was AA and Latino plus 1 white kid. Guess who he picked as his best friend? Why? "Because brown is the color of do-do." It drove me crazy. (We have 3 generations of Howard graduates in our family for pete's sake! )

He's 6 now, and in K at at wonderfully diverse DC charter school. I haven't witnessed this kind of behavior or heard him say anything like this in months. His friends come in all colors and he loves his new school. I can finally exhale now.

I think, although being the "only" may be more difficult for the girls in middle school and up, it seems to me that black males in that situation have more issues in the lower school (although my husband went to a Big 3 for 6th grade and he said it was really difficult having to deal with being the "only." He subsequently transferred out to another private that was more diverse).

Every kid is different. I wouldn't hesitate to drop my oldest daughter in and "only" situation, but I would never put my younger daughter in a school where she was the "only" black kid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. To the pp sharing her DCs' experiences in non-diverse private schools, thank you so much! I heard similar experiences from my AA friends who went to area privates 20 years ago, and while I'm sure things have changed some, I was hoping that this sort of experience had become a thing of the past. I think it's especially hard on AA women because of the whole dating issue - I had many AA private school friends who went through high school without a single date or even a hope of one. It was rough on them when they got to college.

I can truly attest to this. My mother had to fight with my high school to let me go the prom alone. I did not have a date. I could not find a date in high school. It really messes with your self esteem. Iin my senior year, I was determined to go to Smith College. Luckily, my parents said no way, you are going to Spelman. It literally changed my life and gave me a different perspective. It's funny because my parents are not enlightened people, they just saw me struggle as the only one and knew that I needed a different experience. I am forever grateful. I could still hang out with my punk rock crew (at Spelman), but I didn't have to worry about race anymore - oh, and I had LOTS of dates. My husband is a Morehouse man.

This is OP - I went to Spelman too.

PP, here. It certainly is a full time job! To 09:37, I am not expecting the school to parent her. But I can do without the school environment making my job seem like more of an uphill battle when the circumstances could be such that the school is more conducive to promoting respectful behavior and enforcing rules similar to those that I enforce at home.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - I also live in Silver Spring and expect we will send the kids to our neighborhood elementary school. I am also interested in hearing about AA experiences in the Silver Spring middle and high schools, as well as experiences at BCC and WJ, which would probably be out target areas to move if we felt it necessary.

OP, I am an African-American, DC-native (grew up in Ward 7). About 5 years ago, we moved to Chevy Chase, MD. My teenage daughter attends BCC, and we are on the first thing smokin up out of there. Please see my recent post under the "Whitman v BCC v Yorktown v W&L" thread of the General School Discussion forum.

Thanks. Can you tell me a bit about her social experience at BCC? What's the AA student population like? Are there many middle and upper-middle class AA students there? On another thread, I had gotten the impression that all the AA students were from the Rosemary Hills section of SS and among the AA students at least, there was little economic diversity. To the extent this was true, was it ever an issue for your daughter?

That is a very informed question concerning the AA population. I would have to disagreee about the economic diversity among AA students. We have been in this school cluster for about 5 years now and I now a good number of working/middle/upper-middle class families. When my daughter attended Westland, there was an inexplicably sharp divide between the upper-middle class AA students and those from the low-income neighborhoods in SS. In BCC, that divide seems to have disappeared. If I were to offer any explanation, it would be purely speculative. However, my daughter has alluded to the teachers and administration making assumptions about her as a student based on the notion you mentioned.

Regarding her social experience, she has become very disrespectful at home, many of her peers openly use foul language, talk about thier drinking experiences, and some are sexually active (I read their Twitter and FB pages, and my daughter's outgoing and incoming texts -- yes, I am a social media and and cell phone spy. She is aware.). Make-up and short/tight clothing are an issue this year. (If you visit the school, it looks more like the young women are dressed for a night-club rather than for school. There is no substantive dress code.) I am fighthing an uphill battle with the peer group influence and her impression that the aforementioned should be considered normal or acceptable behavior. The administration doesn't seem to blink at any of it. I can't comfortably permit her to attend events or just "hang-out" unsupervised because I am so nervous about how inundated she is with ideals that I don't agree with or promote.

So interesting. Seems like the same thing that people worry about when sending their kids to less affluent schools. Guess you can't escape certain things no matter where your kids are.

I admit, these are "typical" teen issues. However, my job as a parent is to make sure that her "teen-years" environmenst does not become detrimental to her. My husband and I work long hours and, regrettably, cannot constantly work to curb the effects of these issues. We are seeking out a school that is smaller and has more of a community feel. I'm not sure why this tends to dissipate at the high-school level in relatively good public school clusters.

I hate to break this to you. As the mother of a son who is in a small envirnoment, I literally quit my job last year to get him back on track. A school cannot parent your kid. You have to stay in her ass.

You're damn right, PP! My son is at one of these so-called Big 3 schools where the values are vastly different from what we as a family have instilled in him. Academically, it's a great fit, but there are so many social landmines lurking constantly it's mandatory for us to spend the extra time and provide him with additional support, and also not assume/expect that the school will parent or nurture our son. Parenting a teen is certainly another full-time job.

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. To the pp sharing her DCs' experiences in non-diverse private schools, thank you so much! I heard similar experiences from my AA friends who went to area privates 20 years ago, and while I'm sure things have changed some, I was hoping that this sort of experience had become a thing of the past. I think it's especially hard on AA women because of the whole dating issue - I had many AA private school friends who went through high school without a single date or even a hope of one. It was rough on them when they got to college.

I can truly attest to this. My mother had to fight with my high school to let me go the prom alone. I did not have a date. I could not find a date in high school. It really messes with your self esteem. Iin my senior year, I was determined to go to Smith College. Luckily, my parents said no way, you are going to Spelman. It literally changed my life and gave me a different perspective. It's funny because my parents are not enlightened people, they just saw me struggle as the only one and knew that I needed a different experience. I am forever grateful. I could still hang out with my punk rock crew (at Spelman), but I didn't have to worry about race anymore - oh, and I had LOTS of dates. My husband is a Morehouse man.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - I also live in Silver Spring and expect we will send the kids to our neighborhood elementary school. I am also interested in hearing about AA experiences in the Silver Spring middle and high schools, as well as experiences at BCC and WJ, which would probably be out target areas to move if we felt it necessary.

OP, I am an African-American, DC-native (grew up in Ward 7). About 5 years ago, we moved to Chevy Chase, MD. My teenage daughter attends BCC, and we are on the first thing smokin up out of there. Please see my recent post under the "Whitman v BCC v Yorktown v W&L" thread of the General School Discussion forum.

Thanks. Can you tell me a bit about her social experience at BCC? What's the AA student population like? Are there many middle and upper-middle class AA students there? On another thread, I had gotten the impression that all the AA students were from the Rosemary Hills section of SS and among the AA students at least, there was little economic diversity. To the extent this was true, was it ever an issue for your daughter?

That is a very informed question concerning the AA population. I would have to disagreee about the economic diversity among AA students. We have been in this school cluster for about 5 years now and I now a good number of working/middle/upper-middle class families. When my daughter attended Westland, there was an inexplicably sharp divide between the upper-middle class AA students and those from the low-income neighborhoods in SS. In BCC, that divide seems to have disappeared. If I were to offer any explanation, it would be purely speculative. However, my daughter has alluded to the teachers and administration making assumptions about her as a student based on the notion you mentioned.

Regarding her social experience, she has become very disrespectful at home, many of her peers openly use foul language, talk about thier drinking experiences, and some are sexually active (I read their Twitter and FB pages, and my daughter's outgoing and incoming texts -- yes, I am a social media and and cell phone spy. She is aware.). Make-up and short/tight clothing are an issue this year. (If you visit the school, it looks more like the young women are dressed for a night-club rather than for school. There is no substantive dress code.) I am fighthing an uphill battle with the peer group influence and her impression that the aforementioned should be considered normal or acceptable behavior. The administration doesn't seem to blink at any of it. I can't comfortably permit her to attend events or just "hang-out" unsupervised because I am so nervous about how inundated she is with ideals that I don't agree with or promote.

So interesting. Seems like the same thing that people worry about when sending their kids to less affluent schools. Guess you can't escape certain things no matter where your kids are.

I admit, these are "typical" teen issues. However, my job as a parent is to make sure that her "teen-years" environmenst does not become detrimental to her. My husband and I work long hours and, regrettably, cannot constantly work to curb the effects of these issues. We are seeking out a school that is smaller and has more of a community feel. I'm not sure why this tends to dissipate at the high-school level in relatively good public school clusters.

I hate to break this to you. As the mother of a son who is in a small envirnoment, I literally quit my job last year to get him back on track. A school cannot parent your kid. You have to stay in her ass.

^^ This is what I am worried about (in the future) for my (young) daughter. 'Cause I was hell on wheels in high school, and in college too, for that matter. And, it really had a lot to do with the kids I was exposed to - I was a very adventurous, do anything crazy, kind of kid. Once I found similar types, we egged each other on to extreme ends. My parents (who had me very young) were not on top of things (because they were busy getting their careers in order) and the ship definitely almost capsized for awhile there. All turned out very well, but I often think how LUCKY I was . . . many, many near misses. So, for my daughter, my plan (ha!) is to really limit the exposure to, ahem, "nefarious" elements. Small classes sound like a really good idea.

good luck with that, right?!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - I also live in Silver Spring and expect we will send the kids to our neighborhood elementary school. I am also interested in hearing about AA experiences in the Silver Spring middle and high schools, as well as experiences at BCC and WJ, which would probably be out target areas to move if we felt it necessary.

OP, I am an African-American, DC-native (grew up in Ward 7). About 5 years ago, we moved to Chevy Chase, MD. My teenage daughter attends BCC, and we are on the first thing smokin up out of there. Please see my recent post under the "Whitman v BCC v Yorktown v W&L" thread of the General School Discussion forum.

Thanks. Can you tell me a bit about her social experience at BCC? What's the AA student population like? Are there many middle and upper-middle class AA students there? On another thread, I had gotten the impression that all the AA students were from the Rosemary Hills section of SS and among the AA students at least, there was little economic diversity. To the extent this was true, was it ever an issue for your daughter?

That is a very informed question concerning the AA population. I would have to disagreee about the economic diversity among AA students. We have been in this school cluster for about 5 years now and I now a good number of working/middle/upper-middle class families. When my daughter attended Westland, there was an inexplicably sharp divide between the upper-middle class AA students and those from the low-income neighborhoods in SS. In BCC, that divide seems to have disappeared. If I were to offer any explanation, it would be purely speculative. However, my daughter has alluded to the teachers and administration making assumptions about her as a student based on the notion you mentioned.

Regarding her social experience, she has become very disrespectful at home, many of her peers openly use foul language, talk about thier drinking experiences, and some are sexually active (I read their Twitter and FB pages, and my daughter's outgoing and incoming texts -- yes, I am a social media and and cell phone spy. She is aware.). Make-up and short/tight clothing are an issue this year. (If you visit the school, it looks more like the young women are dressed for a night-club rather than for school. There is no substantive dress code.) I am fighthing an uphill battle with the peer group influence and her impression that the aforementioned should be considered normal or acceptable behavior. The administration doesn't seem to blink at any of it. I can't comfortably permit her to attend events or just "hang-out" unsupervised because I am so nervous about how inundated she is with ideals that I don't agree with or promote.

So interesting. Seems like the same thing that people worry about when sending their kids to less affluent schools. Guess you can't escape certain things no matter where your kids are.

I admit, these are "typical" teen issues. However, my job as a parent is to make sure that her "teen-years" environmenst does not become detrimental to her. My husband and I work long hours and, regrettably, cannot constantly work to curb the effects of these issues. We are seeking out a school that is smaller and has more of a community feel. I'm not sure why this tends to dissipate at the high-school level in relatively good public school clusters.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - I also live in Silver Spring and expect we will send the kids to our neighborhood elementary school. I am also interested in hearing about AA experiences in the Silver Spring middle and high schools, as well as experiences at BCC and WJ, which would probably be out target areas to move if we felt it necessary.

OP, I am an African-American, DC-native (grew up in Ward 7). About 5 years ago, we moved to Chevy Chase, MD. My teenage daughter attends BCC, and we are on the first thing smokin up out of there. Please see my recent post under the "Whitman v BCC v Yorktown v W&L" thread of the General School Discussion forum.

Thanks. Can you tell me a bit about her social experience at BCC? What's the AA student population like? Are there many middle and upper-middle class AA students there? On another thread, I had gotten the impression that all the AA students were from the Rosemary Hills section of SS and among the AA students at least, there was little economic diversity. To the extent this was true, was it ever an issue for your daughter?

That is a very informed question concerning the AA population. I would have to disagreee about the economic diversity among AA students. We have been in this school cluster for about 5 years now and I now a good number of working/middle/upper-middle class families. When my daughter attended Westland, there was an inexplicably sharp divide between the upper-middle class AA students and those from the low-income neighborhoods in SS. In BCC, that divide seems to have disappeared. If I were to offer any explanation, it would be purely speculative. However, my daughter has alluded to the teachers and administration making assumptions about her as a student based on the notion you mentioned.

Regarding her social experience, she has become very disrespectful at home, many of her peers openly use foul language, talk about thier drinking experiences, and some are sexually active (I read their Twitter and FB pages, and my daughter's outgoing and incoming texts -- yes, I am a social media and and cell phone spy. She is aware.). Make-up and short/tight clothing are an issue this year. (If you visit the school, it looks more like the young women are dressed for a night-club rather than for school. There is no substantive dress code.) I am fighthing an uphill battle with the peer group influence and her impression that the aforementioned should be considered normal or acceptable behavior. The administration doesn't seem to blink at any of it. I can't comfortably permit her to attend events or just "hang-out" unsupervised because I am so nervous about how inundated she is with ideals that I don't agree with or promote.

So interesting. Seems like the same thing that people worry about when sending their kids to less affluent schools. Guess you can't escape certain things no matter where your kids are.