[This month on ARP, we're exploring the intersection of race and education. Below is the next installment of the series.]
written by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Dawn Friedman
We’re homeschoolers and have been since our son Noah left preschool seven years ago. We came to homeschooling in fits and starts, always stopping to consider how things were working for Noah and for our family. He’s in seventh grade this year and so far, so good.
For Noah, it was his introversion and his sensitivity that first made us think about keeping him home. With encouragement from his preschool teachers, we decided to take a year off before sending him to our local elementary and because of his winter birthday, this meant that we’d be homeschooling for kindergarten instead of just sending him late (otherwise he would have been 6 going on 7 for kindergarten and since his academic skills weren’t the issue, this just wasn’t workable). We saw that year as a free year and decided we’d re-evaluate before deciding what to do next. Turns out that homeschooling – specifically unschooling, which is homeschooling with little to no structure – was working for all of us. Noah blossomed and I wasn’t losing my mind balancing his education with my freelance career so it stuck.
When we decided to adopt we knew we would be adopting a black child into our white family and I started thinking about homeschooling in that context. In Central Ohio, where we are, the homeschooling community is overwhelmingly white. My homeschool support group is mostly made up of the same white families I met years and years ago in La Leche League/ I knew that our black child would be the only child of color at most of the homeschooling activities so I started to looked around at our other choices.
Let me add here that homeschooling, for us, meets some pretty important family values around creativity, independence and conformity. I don’t want to get into these too much here since I don’t think this blog is the right place to have a general homeschool discussion, but I think it’s important to be clear that I think about homeschooling in the same way I think about religion, (which I’ve written about before on this blog). That is to say that I needed to weigh our values against our future child’s needs and I knew that this would be something I’d be doing for the rest of my life for both my kids – homeschooling is just one part of that.
During this time of serious questioning I read Paula Penn-Nabrit’s book Morning by Morning, which is about her decision to pull her sons out of a tony private school (that happens to be here in Columbus) and begin homeschooling them, in part because of the racism at her sons’ school. While I knew that what she had to offer her sons (namely a black home life) wasn’t something I could give our future child, I did start thinking more about racism in the school system. I wondered about my ability to successfully advocate for my black child at school. Would I recognize more subtle racism? Would I have the clear vision that Ms. Penn-Nabrit had when the teachers’ racism began to impact their learning experience? If a teacher came to me with concerns, would I be able to untangle genuine problems from prejudice?
Mostly I began to understand that I couldn’t make a decision about my child’s education until I met her school-aged self.
Well, that time has come and Madison is home. She is home because of our values but also because of her needs. Madison is a busy, busy, busy child who has trouble sitting still. She’s big for her age and extremely articulate so people expect a lot from her but her very real (and age appropriate) need to move makes it hard for her spend much time doing any “seat work”. It’s not her attention span, mind you, (which is just fine) but her drive for physical activity is pretty overwhelming. I knew that sitting in a classroom even for just two and a half hours for half-day kindergarten would be very hard for her and I worried, too, that a brown-skinned child who couldn’t keep her mouth shut would be in for undeserved censure (and research bears me out). I just don’t trust the system to treat my fidgeting, chatterbox daughter the same way it would a little blonde girl with the same busy spirit.
I’ve had a couple of people say that my daughter needs to learn how to handle racism and I say sure but not all day every day when she’s still building her self of self-worth and confidence. Besides which, the world being what is is, I know that school isn’t the only place my daughter will face discrimination.
Because our homeschooling world is so white, we’re looking for enrichment activities outside the community like enrolling Madison in a daisy scout troop that is mostly other black kids but for the time being, we’re keeping her home.
It’s a decision we’ll continue to re-evaluate, as we have for her brother. I can’t tell you where she might be in a few years but for now and for as long as it works, we’re staying happily at home.
Every family must do what is right for them, and I applaud you for your decision and sticking to it! On the other hand, my “brown” daughter (she continues to tell me that no one’s skin is actually black) has had a chance to establish her cultural identity and face very subtle racism at her public school. While I know that she will be forced to face other more serious experiences with racism, I feel that attending public school has offered her a softer way to experience others and has allowed her school to decide their own identity in diversity and how to handle it. We’ve also raised her and continue to (she’s in 2nd grade now) not to expect racism and to look at each individual as a single experience. In our neck of the woods, the population is nearly all white, and while I wish it were different – it is changing slowly. While I want her to be an integral part of black culture and the black community, I don’t want her to become a young woman with the weight of centuries of racism and discrimination hanging around her neck.
Long winded opinion!
Btw, I’m impressed with homeschooling!
The future is built on the past. We can’t disengage ourselves from the past; simply cut ourselves off and go forward as if it never happened. Can we???? You may be able to raise a white child to not deal with the years and history of racism in the US. Sooner or later a black child is going to be forced to “carry” it, I believe. I believe that we all carry the weight of those years of racism regardless of the color of our skin. If we are white and we don’t carry the weight – deal with the responsibility which is ours because we share in white privilege – then we contribute to the status quo of racism. If we don’t prepare our black children to deal with the “weight” of it, we are leaving them unprepared to deal with the world they live in; giving them unrealistic expectations, and not giving them the foundational understandings that they need to be accepted in other black communities where they will look for friends and identity. At least, these are the beliefs – the framework – from which I am raising and have raised my four black daughters as a white parent.
I applaud your decision to keep her out of school for the time being, while also giving her opportunities to associate with kids who look like her. I feel it’s important for people to have strong senses of self-worth and self-confidence in order to weather the difficulties that life can bring. And for some kids, I just don’t think that an institution, such as school, is the best place to cultivate these values. Everybody is different and every school is different, so while one child may be flourishing in a particular environment, another child may wilt in that same place. I think you’re probably spot-on that your daughter’s personality might not mesh well with the system.
Beautiful, well thought out decision to keep your daughter home. While I am not a homeschooling mom I certainly admire them and applaud your efforts. Unschooling is especially intriguing to me and sounds like an amazing fit for your kids.
I love that you are being so thoughtful and balanced in your approach.
Great, great thoughts! We are in northern Ohio and wonder the same about the very white world, especially among homeschoolers here… even with our bio kids. We’ll see how it pans out or if we’ll even live here when our next child joins our family through adoption. I wholeheartedly agree with your concerns and your solution and find your story very encouraging as we face the future.
We are also homeschooling our three kiddos. I like you want them to first find out who they are and who our family is before having to deal with racism and the cruelty of other children and adults. We are always out in our community and meeting with our friends (adopted, bio, black, white, asian). I cannot apologize for wanting to nurture my children’s emotional well being before sending them out in to the world.
While I do agree that knowing history is a very very valuable tool, I also think that with it comes alot of stuff that doesn’t necessarily pertain to our society now. Sometimes emotions play such a strong part that history becomes present. I’ve had a lot of long conversations with our local African American Cultural Center regarding just this, and we’ve all sort of tentatively agreed that history is history and often we continue it without being aware that we are. Interesting psychological subject.
Well, I’m going to step out on a limb here and say we made the opposite decision for our daughter precisely because she is Latina and we are not. She will be attending a Spanish immersion school this fall, where half of the students are native Spanish speakers, many students are from bicultural/bilingual backgrounds, some are adopted from Latin American countries, and the minority are white or African-American. While the school is a little too traditional in educational philosophy for our tastes, girl scouts or summer culture camps or whatever simply cannot take the place of having our daughter immersed in her birth culture and language on a daily basis. Most importantly, her teachers, principal and most of the staff share her heritage. We are making trade-offs to do this; we are an out-of-the-mainstream kind of family and I know she will experience a certain kind of culture shock at this school.
Homeschoolers tend to be an interesting, independent lot. I usually enjoy interviewing them. The ones who are the best at it expose their kids to a lot of different people and community activities as well as making sure they have a rich curriculum at home. I’m not sure what I make of unschooling. In the wrong hands, I think it’s likely to result in uneducated or, at the least, very unevenly educated kids. I think there’s a certain value in structure and requiring kids to learn what they aren’t particularly interested in learning for the sake of discipline.
I would like to think each of you for your post, information and opinions. It is 8:47am and I have just returned home from walking my daughter to the bus stop, today is the 3rd day of 2nd grade. I turned to the NET today to look for some support, guidance and just information in general. I am a African American mother with a beautiful African American child. Although I don’t have the actual data… my daughter is the only African American child on her school bus. There is not a caucasian, latin, or even asian child…. all the other children are Indian. (Last year there was an Asian child whom my child was friends with, they have since moved). The school itself is mostly White, Indian, less Latin, Asian and maybe 5% of the entire school being African American. My child is the only “black” child in her class. I am torn… when I became a single parent I moved to this neighborhood because it was safe and from my research understood that the school system itself was very good. I drive my daughter a few towns over for ballet just so that she can interact with other African American girls… a more diverse atmosphere in general (Latin, Asian, Caucasian…etc). She is not the minority! Home schooling is not an option. But what do I do? The Indian community in our experience is a very tight knit group. We speak in the morning… no one speaks back. The children play with one another but not my daughter. I don’t think they are actually trying to be mean, although it is very mean. They don’t accept outsiders. My daughter has experience racism outright and in more subtle ways (She was told by a little white girl that she could not be friends with a white boy because she was black. She sits alone on the school bus). There are no teachers of color (black or otherwise at her school… she has told me she feels that the teachers give “special” treatment to the kids that look like them” It pains me as a mother when she tells me these things. I show my daughter to be proud of who she is and her culture, but I know its hard to for her. A seven year old shouldn’t have to be so strong. Despite these things, my daughter is very intelligent, well spoken and friendly. She is a helpful caring and sensative child. I would like to hear any comments words of support or suggestions. Thank you for allowing me to speak my mind this morning.
Good morning, Lylas. We put our daughter on the bus in much the same fashion last year. She was accepted at a public gifted school for highly advanced learners, but which is almost 90% white. The reast are Asian, with a handful of AA children, about 10 per the 500 total students in the school. We had huge concerns, even after talking with other parents of minority kids already going there.
After one year, I’d say some of our concerns were justified, some were not. There WERE indeed kids who made racial comments to her, and she DID sometimes feel like there was no one who liked or understood her. As an example, she ended up taking her braids out early when she’d had them done for Easter because she got tired of the ignorant comments.
But we also made some good friends as parents-other biracial or AA families with kids at the school. Our daughter made some good friends too, adn she certainly got an excellent education, from a teacher who made sure that it wasn’t Eurocentric.
More importantly, though, we made sure our DD spent plenty of time among kids of color, like she always had. There’s her dance class, her choir, her church activities with her aunt, and her extended family on her father’s side. These relationships are where we really foster closeness, not so much at the school.
This year things are going to be different as the program will move to a school with two populations-the GT one and a group of advanced, but not highly advanced kids in more traditional classrooms. Most of those kids are minority students, and both groups will have activities together. We have stepped up to become active in helping this new situation work out for everyone.
I wanted to add to the discussion above about homeschooling and protecting kids from the reality of racism by not teaching about it until they are older. I can’t say I agree with this at all. Maybe it’s possible in some locations to pretend racism doesn’t exist and to ignore black history until your kids are older, but that certainly wasn’t the case here. My DD heard ignorant racial comments long before she was even school age just being out in public with me. I don’t see how keeping her home from school would have helped. And her church uses black history as a theme quite often, in addition to having a stronger focus during Black History month.
And I say this as a former homeschooling parent (my older two kids), I don’t feel it’s a good idea to protect kids from reality on any subject. I don’t feel it ruiins their innocence or damages them in any way. Rather, it gives them an honest picture of the world, and shows them, if WE handle things right, that no matter what has happened, or might happen, we will take care of them. That’s just my two cents.
Hey Agibean –
Just to be clear, I DON’T advocate keeping a kid home to protect them from racism. My choice isn’t as simple as that and stems from this:
1. My educational values, which make me more comfortable having homeschooling kids than it does having kids in the particular schools that are options for us.
2. My daughter’s business, which I think would be mistaken for ADHD if she got the wrong teacher and would definitely get her in trouble. And that her brown skin might lead her to get even more discipline.
3. The fact that there are few other black faces at the school across the way and NO black teachers and believing we can get her more time with black kids and adults by keeping her OUT of school.
“I’ve had a couple of people say that my daughter needs to learn how to handle racism and I say sure but not all day every day when she’s still building her self of self-worth and confidence. Besides which, the world being what is is, I know that school isn’t the only place my daughter will face discrimination.”
I THANK YOU for doing your child the favor of living a real CHILDHOOD. I am a Black man from a Louisiana city filled with people with interesting views of my skin and all that accompanies it. My mother and grandfather taught me by example and occasional direction how to handle racism while keeping my esteem and psyche intact. Everyday wasn’t a “school day” in my family: we enjoyed each other in our family environment.
Everything outside the front door was just that–everything outside the front door. Just as every person who has less melanin than I do isn’t racist, every person whose skin mirrors mine doesn’t think about race at every breath/first meeting/new occasion. As you said, life has enough lessons in race and diversity outside the front door. I believe in taking a break from other people’s hangups.
I definitely applaud you. In general, I am concerned about white parents adopting black children or children from other cultures because of the assimilation that takes place. It is heartening for me to hear you describe your experience and how concientiously you are caring for your child.
I am an AA mom with a little boy. I have candid discussions with him about race all the time and have from the time that he entered kindergarten. These discussions were on a kindergarten level of course, but I wanted him to know that this issue was one to address and acknowledge because we lived in a predominantly white area. And I was am very deliberate with him. We observe MLK day, we don’t just use it as a relaxation day. I point out positive examples of African Americans. I point out negative examples that are portrayed as well and talk about the cultural reference for them.
Currently, I am reading BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell. If you haven’t read it, I would recommend it because it is an enjoyable read that has some concepts which underscore the importance of positive associations for race. As you move forward, I think that it is not as important to keep your child from knowing racism as it is to let her see how you respond to it and to provide plenty of positive associations with African Americans.
My son is now 9 years-old and we still talk very freely about race. He has great self-esteem and great relationships with people of all races, so I feel comfortable with how I have tackled this issue with him.
I am glad that you shared your story. Good luck to you and your family. Your daughter is a blessed little girl.
i support your tackling the issue with great vigor as my community lay people still fall in the trap of sectarianism which is more or less a form of “racism”; i consider any type of discrimination an ugly form of racism. Great good luck!!!
I am african american and we homeschool for cultural reasons. i DO advocate keeping a kid home to protect them from racism as long as possible…”they will have to deal with it sooner or later” is a lie of sorts–it is much easier to handle the evil of racism after you have matured in a safe and protective environment, then you can attribute the wrong to the person committing it, instead looking to yourself for some fault or failure. thanks for being sensitive to your daughters needs…you are a good mama.