crossposted from DadWagon
Last week I went to 112th and Lennox in West Harlem to see the universal pre-K program at P.S. 185.
I’ve been looking at pre-K programs throughout uptown Manhattan ever since we discovered that we were too poor for private school but too rich for Head Start. It’s been a frustrating process; as I’ve written before, underfunding has left just 406 spots in District 3, which covers the Upper West Side and West Harlem. Some schools have ten applicants for every spot. Siblings get first priority; the rest get in (or not) through a lottery.
At least one school wouldn’t even give us a tour because the odds are so long. Our zoned school isn’t doing pre-K at all this year. The next closest school is just three blocks away, but when I visited, I found the classrooms cluttered and chaotic, with a computer video blaring in one corner while kids tried to play/work elsewhere. But even there we would have little chance of winning a spot for our daughter.
P.S. 185 was completely different. Monika Vargas, the parent coordinator, was welcoming, even solicitous. The classrooms were spacious and uncluttered. The kids were wonderfully calm and attentive as their teacher read a book to them. After the tour, Monika said the school always had a few spots open, and she all but guaranteed us a place for Dalia if we filled out an application and ranked them no. 1 right then.
But I hesitated. I left without filling out an application. I still don’t know if we’re going to apply to the school at all. Why? Because every single one of the kids in both pre-K classes is black. And Dalia (as you might know) is not.
I know, I know. Harlem schools have black students: not shocking. But still I wasn’t prepared for Dalia to potentially be the only kid who wasn’t black. And even though America has been magically postracial for 415 days since Inauguration Day, I’m still not sure what to think about the idea.
[Let's break here for my humble rendition of the "Some of my best friends are black" disclaimer that white people like to use before talking about race: Actually, none of my Best Friends are black. I suppose a couple of the next tier—the Very Good Friends—are. It is also true that my aunt is black, as are my (half-white) cousins, although family is family and not really divided by race, especially in this past year, when my uncle was killed on his motorcycle by a fucking scatterbrained soccer mom driving a Honda Odyssey and all of us who survived him ceased being black or white for a while and were just identically useless and heartbroken and angry. Now that shit is postracial.]
Here’s one reason why sending my girl—who is equal parts Mexican, Jewish, Japanese and German (she’s pale, if not exactly white)—into an all-black classroom could be problematic. Four-year-olds are just programmed to be blunt about differences. Dalia has never really asked her mom or me about skin color, but she does ask loudly why that man has no legs, or if the “fat woman” is going into the same store as us. Her school this year is mostly white kids with some Asian and Hispanic kids; she’ll notice the change and she’ll ask loud questions about it. The other kids will ask their own loud questions of her and about her. Children are innocent, but not ignorant (that’s why it’s a bad idea to feign colorblindness).
But will those questions ever go beyond curiosity and become something that keeps Dalia from feeling like she truly belongs with the group? I don’t know. Would a black 4-year-old girl feel like she had more in common with Dalia (another girl) than with a black boy in the class? Seems reasonable.
Another confounding variable is black Harlem’s own diversity. I say that the both classes were all black, but I just saw their faces. I have no idea if those kids were born in Harlem or in Haiti, if they’re from the South or from Senegal. The one other parent I met in my brief time there was from the Ivory Coast. Some of the kids could have been Hispanic, which would again give Dalia something in common with them (the Spanish language) that might trump any difference in skin color. Same goes with socioeconomic status: Harlem is financially diverse, and the school might be as well.
I could be analyzing it too much. After all, I imagine that a lot of black people (not just Michael Steele) often find themselves alone in a roomful of white people. In theory, reversing those roles should be a good thing. But that’s a heavy trip to lay on a 4-year-old. I dream of a world where color doesn’t really matter, but Dalia is going to have to go to school in the real world, and I don’t want her to have to pay for my daydreams.
By the same token, it’s just a year, even if it doesn’t work out perfectly. And it certainly could be a positive thing, getting exposure to kids who are (at least in superficial ways) different from her. And the school’s next group may just naturally be more diverse—I ran into a Filipino-American mom who was also in love with the school, and considering putting her kid there. Maybe Dalia wouldn’t have to break the color barrier alone, though we wouldn’t know until they hand out assignments in the summer.
So, readers, what would you do?
UPDATE: On rereading this post this morning, I realized I made it sound as if this were there perfect school, just the wrong color. Actually, one aspect of the pedagogy didn’t quite agree with me: the curriculum seemed pretty rigid. All the 4- and 5-year-olds wore uniforms. They learned writing through practicing writing, same with numbers. They were assigned homework. It was the least progressive of all the schools I visited, though that’s not necessarily a deal-breaker in and of itself. Oh, and that Filipina mom? She said she might put her kid there if she could get at least one or two other other friends who weren’t black to enroll with her. So that’s unclear still…
I’m not a parent (yet), so I can’t speak to that. But I can speak to being a child, and until we moved when I was 5, I was usually the only white kid in groups in our south Atlanta neighborhood. I like to think that I turned out okay
(My mom did have to talk to me more about race & skin color at a young age than she probably otherwise would have, but I think that turned out well for both of us.)
I would not have a problem with my child being the only white kid. I went to several schools when I was young where that was true. It really wasn’t an issue. Regardless of race I always found the other nerdy kids and we got along. If your child ends up being into sports or math or science or computers–there will be kids there who are ‘like’ her.
I don’t use the phrase ‘color blind’ because I see race and I think it’s kind of a silly thing to say. In this specific case I will say that race is a much smaller issue than you think. Yes, there will be rocky moments–there would be in an all white school. Sheltering your kid from the diversity of life in the name of protecting her won’t do her favors in the long run.
Good luck.
Nathan,
I can only respond based on my own experience. I was one of a handful of white kids in an otherwise black student body (I’d say that there were a handful of white kids in every grade). I lived in a city that was historically very polarized by race, and had a particularly nasty racist history. There were tensions, for sure, and the occasional eruption of black-white hostilities, but these were very occasional. I did not feel excluded by my black classmates, but it is true that most of the time, black and white students didn’t mix.
Looking back, I would say that the hostilities and the not mixing had everything to do with my teachers and my parents. We all needed help navigating this territory–almost all of us were in largely mono-racial neighborhoods until kindergarten and had innocently absorbed all kinds of lessons from living in a pretty racism-friendly place–and we didn’t get that help. And then teachers made things worse by clearly favoring white students over black students.
So, my sense is that your daughter could go to this school and be just fine IF the school and YOU are going to be committed to making that happen. If I were you, I would have a very frank conversation with the school about how they approach race, difference, inclusion/exclusion issues. And if you have ANY sense that your daughter will be favored over other students because of her race, I would run the other way fast. But I doubt that will be the case. You’ll also need to think hard about yourself–are YOU willing to do the legwork that will make it possible for you to guide your daughter in how to respond when, for example, she is excluded by other students based on her race, or when she is accused of thinking she’s better than everyone else because she’s perceived as white.
However, I also want to say two things to you. First, I hope that there will be some degree of diversity in any school that your daughter goes to and that you, in fact, will make that one of the important criteria for choosing a school. That means, you’re going to have to do some of this work anyway. It’s not as if attending a school where she is perceived as part of the racial majority gets you off the hook for helping her navigate difference. So, I hope you’re up for that, period. (And, because you’re posting here, I suspect you are.)
Second, I wouldn’t trade the schooling experience I had for the world, even with all of its discomfort and confusion. It has given me an understanding of racism and white privilege that I’m not sure I would have gotten otherwise, and that I feel lucky to have (as imperfect, to be sure, as it is).
Wow. It sounds like you’re making a classroom of 4- and 5-year-olds out to be a group of aliens or monsters or something. What the heck?
Why are black kids so scary to you? Maybe that’s the issue to spend time thinking about?
Not sure why, but this makes me sad. There is often an undercurrent of all Black = bad in many assessments of schools and I worry if that is present here (maybe subconsciously). I am guilty of the same, I must say. When I was looking for a preschool for my son, I looked a few home-programs. Two of them had only black children and that made me wonder: why? Is this program ‘not as good’ as other programs? But my situation is a little different. Putting a Black child into a daycare or pre-K program that has all other Black children–that doesn’t make a statement. Its pretty common. Adding my son makes no difference whatsoever, except that it could arguably segregate him into a program that parents like yourself might not choose for their (non-Black) children. However, if you put your child into an all Black school–it DOES make a statement. A powerful statement. To me it says:
1. Schools with Black children are not lesser. I would put my own child into one.
2. Black children are just like my own child–but a different color. They can have as much or as little in common with my child as any other child.
3. Honey, its okay to look different from the people around you. You can have things in common with people who do not look like you. People that don’t look like you are not to be feared or avoided.
4. I, as a parent, am choosing not to perpetuate segregation by avoiding a school based on the color of their students.
You know, if you chose to put your child in this school, the next time parents come to view the classroom they will see at least one child that is non-black. Plus, it sounds like your daughter is a person of color and that you identify her as such. Couldn’t putting her a school that is uniformly a school of color lead her to identify with other people of color and to see what they share and not what separates them? Are you worried that her identification as a person of color might take away the advantages she has of being light-skinned? I’m really just wondering, b/c, to me, I can only think that this peice reminds of articles where white authors argue “but people can be racist against white people too!” Is my child that different than yours that you think that she would have nothing in common with him b/c he’s black? Or is it just if he’s standing in another group of children that look like him that he’s to be avoided? Why would you assume that those children have more in common with each other than they would with your daughter, just b/c they all have similar skin tones? As you said, there is a lot of diversity within the Black community. A child whose parents are West African might have less in common with an African American child, in terms of culture, than your daughter.
I will also say that my parents chose to place my brother in a school where he was in the minority (in Hawai’i). In retrospect, they realize that their fear of placing him there was misplaced. Sadly, being one of the few white kids gave him status. My parents realized that they had internalized the idea that “non-white” = “less than”. They subconsciously saw the lack of white faces as a judgment against quality and they chose to cover up that feeling with the fear that my brother would be singled out for being “different.” Not saying you are doing the same but its worth thinking about.
I don’t think homework or too much seatwork is appropriate for 4- and 5-year-olds, nor are uniforms. I probably would avoid the school for that reason, but it sounds like you might not have any other choice. I also would probably be reluctant to send her to a school where she’d be the only one who looked like her in the entire class. Kids tease other kids and it’s possible that she’ll be singled out for teasing because she isn’t black. I wouldn’t expect her to deal with that baggage. Not her job. On the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t be that way. My cousin’s preschool-age son is being raised in New Mexico where all of his friends and the people around him are Navajo and I think he sees that as normal. He was pretty shocked when he visited and saw that nearly everyone around him here is white like him. A lot of it is what a kid is used to and how comfortable you are as parents. I’d think that a class where there’s a mixture of black, white or other kids would be preferable. Living in New York she’s bound to grow up with kids from a variety of backgrounds, so I doubt any class she’ll be in will have children who are only white or only from one religion.
Thanks for the comments on the piece. A few quick thoughts: first, my daughter (as my wife has constantly reminded me to make clear) is not white. I am. But she’s only half-white, and our close family includes African-Americans, Japanese, Mexicans, Jews and Germans. So we already have plenty of opportunities to talk about race. So far, she’s been too young to see the world on those terms. But a lot changes in kids, even from four to five, and I don’t know that she (and her classmates) won’t start to notice race in a different way throughout the year.
I don’t think it’s about being in the majority. As I said, I was never in a majority-white school growing up. But I was in diverse schools, and it’s worth pointing out that an all-black school is not really diverse. As I mentioned, there are more kinds of black people in Harlem than just about anywhere, but would we consider an all-white school that had Portugese and French immigrants, or South Africans–all of whom were white–to be diverse? I don’t know.
The alternative, by the way, is not an all-white school (nor would I want it to be). There are other schools in Harlem that are closer to the 30/30/30 African-American/White/Hispanic mix that was my elementary school. And as some of you pointed out, it really does matter what the teachers and parents do. Besides having noted in my brief visit that the teachers are black and seem really warm and good with the kids, I don’t know how they would deal with it. I assume they are good at what they do and would have great strategies for helping kids understand differences when it comes up.
Again, thanks for your thoughts. It’s an important conversation, of course, which is why I brought it up.
@Nathan (and others choosing schools), I’m curious, what about the teachers’ races? Have those been a consideration? Why/not?
I have a four year old in a daycare where, when he started 2 years ago, he was the only white kid. Now there is another white kid and a couple really light biracial kids. The other kids aren’t all Black, but the vast majority are.
I was a little worried about it, and some stuff has been negative for me, possibly in my own head – I feel like the other parents think I’m ineffectual and permissive in a specifically White way, and also I’ve been told that White people don’t dress their kids right or take good care of their hair (not by a teacher, obviously – by a little girl).
It’s been a really positive experience for my son, I think. Also mostly for me, both in general quality and because the teachers teach antiracism, which is something I don’t feel very qualified to teach.
The teaching style is also a lot more authoritarian than I am comfortable with – but I think learning to deal with the different styles at home and school has been really good for my son.
If you’re worried about how the kids will treat your daughter, one thing to do is ask the teachers how they teach about race, racism, bullying, etc. I think the antiracist teaching where we go, which is aimed at Black boys, with equal time for colorism, is head and shoulders above the “tolerance and diversity” education I’ve encountered other places – but it’s the teacher’s philosophy, not her race, that are at the root of that.
I was one of very few white students in my high school of predominantly, West Indian, South Asian, and Middle Eastern folks. Although occasionally my “absence” of ethnicity (as some students described it) left me on the margin, by and large it was a wonderful experience for me.
I was able to learn about and experience other people’s cultures/languages/traditions. But overall, I got to see and understand first hand how I was generally treated better than my friends and peers (in several aspects of life) because of the colour of my skin and the way in which I spoke .
That learning has stayed with me and continues to inform my perspectives of the world. It was shocking that although I was, by far, the minority, I was still in fact, the majority. I don’t know what kind of person I would be today if I never really witnessed/experienced racism.
Clearly it would be different for a small child, but I think it could potentially be a very beneficial experience none the less.
As a white mother of a brown skinned son and a light skinned daughter and son, I find myself to have a double standard, of sorts. We are also trying to decide on schools and I am very opposed to sending my African American-Caucasian son to a school that is majority-Caucasian. Yet, I don’t think I would feel very strongly against sending my Caucasian children into a school where they are the minority.
Part of this is that my son spends all his time in our family being an “only” (this isn’t what we planned, but this is where we are) and I seek to diffuse that dynamic as much as possible when choosing activities outside of our home (church, play spaces, etc). On the other side, I think it is good for children who are the majority in a culture to experience being in the minority. So, unless my Caucasian children were being treated badly in an environment where they were the “only”, I might see the experience as a good thing.
@ Andrea, why do you oppose uniforms? We live in Australia (but are not Australian) and all children in our state wear uniforms to school. I’m interested to hear other opinions.
I live in Italy and my son is the only black child in his school and we have no choice for a diverse school as we live in a small town outside of a big city. Had we lived in the city, his class would have been much more diversified, and perhaps he would have a different experience, but I truly think his presence is a positive experience for the other kids in the school as many of them have never even been outside of their small town.
My son is in 2nd grade and in Italy, many public schools require pre-K, Kindergarten and elementary school children to wear smocks over their clothes. I think it’s fabulous as this way all the kids are dressed alike (even Italian kids are very designer conscious and will make fun of kids without designer clothes at an early age). My son has homework, albeit usually on Thursdays, Fridays and weekends. He never had homework in pre-K or Kindergarten, I think that is a very North American school thingy cause in Italy, pre-K and Kindergarten is playing and learning the alphabet and numbers only towards the end of Kindergarten.
Really interesting post, and I’m glad to have read it, even if I’m not sure what to make of it.
I love “America has been magically postracial for 415 days since Inauguration Day” !!!
Nathan, sounds like your wife hit the nail on the head. You’re white, but your daughter isn’t. The weight of race you think you’re putting on her is actually your burden. Time to let it go. At least a little bit.
The bigger issue sounds like pedagogy and school policy. That is something that would be hard to discuss with her over dinner or in the playground or with dolls. Ask yourself, if the school looked like the new Gerber Generation ads (Benetton in bibs), would you be debating as much for just a year? If yes, well that’s a really tough one.
Personally, the school sounds great! (But I’m in DC where the preschool lottery is complete madness. Don’t get me started.) If it’s just a year, I’d take it and feel confident that it was the best of your options.
She’s 4. You live in NYC. She’ll get over whatever social challenges she faces in preschool easier than you will.
She’ll probably be very happy in the future to know she has a father so thoughtful and diligent about her best interests.
I certainly feel that way as a non-white daughter of a white dad. Even though I know it wasn’t always easy for him.
Just wait until you hit middle school!
So contributing to the gentrification of Harlem is cool, but if it means your child has to be *gasp* a minority, then there’s a problem? Whomp. Whomp. Four year old Black children have been doing the same thing for years. If you and your family aren’t built for it, leave Harlem.
I appreciate your honesty and candor. A few comments:
I am a Black woman who was born in Salt Lake City where I lived until I was 7. I attended pre-school, kindergarten and 1st grade in SLC and I was always the only Black child. I was never teased b/c I was Black, per se, but it manifested in other, more innocent, ways. For example, when we played house, I always had to play the dad b/c I couldn’t be the mom b/c my hair was not long and silky (like all moms’ hair has to be). I had an afro. Whatever. I wasn’t emotionally scarred by it. More importantly, I learned at an early age that you should not judge a book by its color. When I moved to the self-segregated South in 2nd grade, I was able to make a diverse group of friends b/c getting to know people who didn’t look like me and receiving them as individuals and not stereotypes was not a foreign concept. However, a kid in an environment like mine in SLC or like your daughter would be in at this school will pick up habits/cultural norms (for lack of a better description) of the group. For example, I had a Jherri Curl (they were in style then) and a short afro, but I regularly would flip my hair over my shoulder the way that my white classmates would. I also couldn’t clap to music on beat. I was teased by mercilessly by my extended NY family. Just things to consider.
An earlier commenter said: Kids tease other kids and it’s possible that she’ll be singled out for teasing because she isn’t black. <— And if she were black, they’d tease her for what she was wearing, or how she talks, or how she wears her hair, or WHATEVER. Kids tease other kids. Its a fact of life. “B/c they might get teased” is NEVER a good reason to not do something. This would be a horrible habit to pass along to your child.