This is a guest post for iamnotthebabysitter.com. We encourage voices of all mothers on the topics discussed on this blog. The views and opinions may not be those of iamnotthebabysitter.com, but we encourage and welcome respectful debate and the opinions of all mothers.
We’re going to send our daughters to the public middle school. Don’t hold me to it. In a fit of helicoptering white-flight panic we might drive 5 miles away to the Pacific Palisades and send them to that middle school instead where the kids are mostly white.
If you ask parents from our mostly white charter elementary school why they don’t want to go to the local LAUSD middle school they’ll say it’s because the classes are over-crowded, which they are. They’ll say the library and computer rooms are outdated, which they are. They’ll say there isn’t a patch of grass on the campus, which there isn’t. But there’s also this: our middle school is 50%black, 25%Hispanic, 20%white and 5% other. Aside from the 5% other our white kids will be the minorities on campus. No one will admit that’s a concern. So here I go putting my head on the chopping block.
I’m concerned the kids from black and Hispanic homes might bully our girls because they’re white. I worry they’ll dislike our girls because they may be more privileged. I’m afraid the children from lower income households might come from broken, drug-riddled or violent homes (because, of course, that never happens in affluent homes). I’m also a white woman who had no black friends in school (there were only 5 black kids in our entire high school) and my two Hispanic friends were considered Oreos.
I’m a benign racist because people who don’t look like me make me nervous. I’m ignorant because I haven’t had enough interaction with people who don’t look like me. I’m frightened because most of the things I know about people who don’t look like me I learned from TV and the Internet and a large percentage of people of color who are represented on those platforms are criminals or portraying criminals. Still.
In 2000 I went to South Africa for a film-writing job. I was nervous to go because the only headlines coming out of South Africa at that time were the AIDS epidemic and the rapes of young black girls in the townships. The prevailing wisdom was that men who were infected with HIV/AIDS were raping virgins because they thought this would cure the disease. I imagined rampaging crime, a shell-shocked city.
I ended up in a 5-star hotel, the finest restaurants Cape Town had to offer. I was ferried to and from the movie set by drivers, it was a pretty glamorous gig. But after my “colored” driver (who confessed he’d carried bombs hidden under the very seat I was sitting on during Apartheid) explained to me the ongoing economic Apartheid for coloreds and blacks I decided to take a township tour. The townships are where blacks, displaced from the former homes during Apartheid, live in corrugated tin huts with no indoor plumbing. I took the tour with one of the white German producers. For an entire day his was the only white face I saw. It was an uncomfortable feeling and I had low grade nerves throughout the tour.
But I was humbled at every turn. I purchased herbs in the local witch doctor’s hut but had brought bills that were too big for him to change. His young assistant said he’d go get me change. When he hadn’t come back in twenty minutes I told the witch doctor it was alright, he could keep the change, but he insisted we wait. Sure enough the boy returned with my change, but he’d had to go to four different shops to get it.
We finished the tour in a Shabeen (a township bar), not only was I one of two white people there, but I was also the only woman. Fear set in. Was I truly safe here? The local men stared at us for what seemed like an uncomfortable amount of time until one of them approached me. He explained they were staring because they couldn’t understand what “a lady like me was doing in a place like this.” We laughed over the shared reference. Then he offered to buy me a cold beer, which I accepted. When we were leaving this same generous gentleman thanked me for caring enough to come and visit them.
Fears are debunked by exposure to the things we fear; like pulling away the curtain to reveal the frantic old man yanking on levers to create the Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz.
We plan to send our daughters to our local public middle school. I hope my girls will be safe. I hope it will be the right decision for them. I want to support public education, but more to the point I want my kids to have a broader worldview than I had growing up. I want them to feel confident and comfortable with good people of every culture, race and creed. In short, I want them to be better than me.
This post is a syndicated that was originally posted here. Shannon Bradley-Colleary blogs is an Aging Vaintress, Mom Butler and Wife Dominatrix who blogs at The Woman Formerly Known As Beautiful. She is also a contributing blogger on The Huffington Post.
I’m not sure there is such a thing as “benign” racism. Is there? As a person who is considered a minority several times over in this country , I appreciate all of the talks that my parents had with me and that they continue to have with me now that I am a parent. For those who haven’t read it, I really recommend this post: The Danger of Not Talking to Your Children About Race: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/the-danger-of-not-talking-to-your-children-about-race/
Thank you for being so honest and sharing something that can be hard to admit. I’m married to a black man and he teases me that I’m sometimes racist. We used to live in a predominately black neighborhood, and, at times, I was nervous – I wouldn’t walk by myself. And my husband didn’t want me to either.
You’re so right about how certain experiences humble us – and teach us that it’s okay to let our guard down. I grew up in a very NON-diverse small town. Now living in LA, I hope my daughter has a different outlook.
I read both of your blogs, and enjoy them tremendously!
Since there are no other comments, I will bite! As you have noted, this is an uncomfortable topic, so I hope both you and the other commenters will respect my views.
I’ll say it: I am guilty of “white flight” myself.
My husband and I lived in Washington, DC for years. The population in our neighborhood there was very diverse, many minorities, and largely gay. We lived in a diverse neighborhood for 6 years in DC…so I assure you we have NO issue being around people who don’t “look” like us. However, we recently left our Washington, DC neighborhood for what is basically a lily white suburb outside the city. It was so very upsetting to leave the neighborhood we loved, but we did so simply because we wanted our son to have access to better schools. We prioritize education over almost everything else in our lives.
I think your post misses the point of why some white flight happens. Not everyone flees diversity because they think minorities are “icky,” or they are worried about their kid getting teased, or they are grossed out by people who have different cultural norms than they do. In our case, we left because we don’t want to send our son to DC public schools… because, frankly, schools that heavily represent certain minority populations generally perform lower academically than schools located in wealthy, white areas.
Yes, yes, yes – there are a number of factors that cause problems within urban schools, and I’m not denying those. No one is saying lousy schools are the faults of the children/families who attend them, etc. I’m not interested in debating why urban schools end up the way they do. However, I am saying that the facts are what they are, and given the opportunity to send my child to a better school, I will take it.
I’m not willing to deprive my child of a higher quality school simply because I think it is philosophically important to stay put in a minority neighborhood where I’m comfortable. My husband and I believe that there are plenty of ways to expose our children to other cultures and to teach them respect for others.
At the end of the day, we don’t have so little faith in our parenting that we need to put our kid in a sub-par school system in order to teach him acceptance, love, and respect for others.
100% I agree with this post! Schools with a higher minority population seem to perform less then those that are more “white.” I want my children to have more exposure to minorities then I did, but not at the cost of sub par school system. Part of me feels guilty for transferring to our “year round” option which is much more “white” then our traditional option because the traditional needs more parents like me. Not bc of my color, but bc I’m an active volunteer and we can afford to support the fundraiser. Part of me thought that it was wrong of me to switch and that changes can’t happen if parents like me don’t stay and try to help out, but in the end I chose the school with the better test scores.
Hi – I commented earlier, but it didn’t show up. Trying this again… I appreciate the honesty that comes in this post. In this day in age, we don’t always talk freely of our prejudices, etc. My husband is black, and he teases me sometimes, calling me racist. I grew up in a small town without much access to culture and diversity. Now, living in LA – I hope my daughter has a different perspective.
Brown people are not so scary once you get to know them. Reading this post I can’t help but to think about my niece who’s on an internship in Fort Lauderdale. Her first week getting acquainted with her roommates and one turns out to be very prejudice of Mexicans. Her off-handed remarks are a reminder of what is expected when you choose to work and live in an environment that will never accept you simply b/c of your race and what is associated with that. Learning that you (and more than likely others) are doing what they can to make changes towards acceptance brings hope for change. Attending these schools may or may not mean more work for you outside what they offer in terms of curriculum, but the cultural diversity they experience will enrich your children as well as those that they connect with in a way that is meaningful.
Congratulations on being part of the problem. “Benign racism” is an oxymoron. You are a full grown adult and can choose to educate yourself on other groups of people. Also, you use race and class interchangeably. They are not one and the same. As for your desire to not raise racists you have likely already failed in that endeavor. Children will pick up how you really feel about other groups of people.
I feel like Shikki’s reply voices my concerns too closely for me to go and write my own original reply. So I’ll just tack mine on to theirs.
There’s no need to put any word before the word racist. You are just racist. I’m not saying you’re a horrible person but it’s true, racist is racist. Putting the word “benign” before the word “racist” looks like you’re trying to say “oh, but we’re not thaaat bad.”
And, like Shikki mentioned, why are you using race and class so interchangeable?? Please try writing a post that discusses this. Do/did you not want your children to go to your local public school because the children and families there have dark skin? or is it because they are poor? Is it because the school gets less funding? or is it because you think the lower class and/or dark children will bring the level of education down? I’m honestly confused.
Hmmm I’m not sure about you being a “benign racist”, I think it’s a contradiction in terms. I think you might just be racist.
I don’t know why you’d mention how your two hispanic friends were considered Oreos. An Oreo is someone who is dark on the outside, but white on the inside.
What does it mean to ‘act white’? When we conflate culture with race…like white people have a stronghold on ‘reasonable’ behavior or interests.
American primary schools teach people that racism is the dislike of a person simply because of the color of that person’s skin. It is so much more than that.