This slightly awkward, but hilarious interaction strikes at the heart of the change in our neighborhood. While we were once one of the only white people in the neighborhood, most of the abandoned houses are now snapped up and fixed up by young white couples, often with kids. Those kids don't go to our school.

Though my daughter is not the only white kindergartner in my neighborhood, she is the only white kindergartner in her class. My new neighbors, ones who come into the neighborhood raving about how much they love it, do not send their kids to the school. While they love my neighborhood, they do not love my school.

A friend and I were recently chatting about her move to the neighborhood next to mine. I was surprised that she didn't even look across the dividing line road we live about two blocks from. She shrugged her shoulders, "yeah, I really like your house but our real estate agent said we shouldn't even look there because of the schools." Because of the schools. The school I send my daughter to. She did not look at the houses with more square footage and a smaller price tag because someone who has never been in the school doesn't find it suitable.

This summer, when I told the other moms at the pool where my kids went to school. I was repeatedly told to move them. This from women who had never ever set foot in my school. They had not had contact with our deeply passionate, and very responsive principal, had not met the pre-k teachers who my daughter loves more than Santa. They had not toured the various science labs, or listened as their child talked incessantly about robotics. They don't know that every Tuesday Juliet comes home with a new Spanish song to sing and bothers me until I look up the colors in Spanish if I can't remember them from High school. Juliet loves her school. Her mother, a teacher at a suburban school, and her father, a PhD candidate at the state university, both find the school completely acceptable, more than acceptable. We love it too.

But my neighbors will not send their kids there and my friends won't even move into the neighborhood. They will whisper about it. They will tell their friends not to go there. They will even tell a stranger that she should move her kids immediately as they both wait for their children to come down the water slide. But they will not give the neighborhood school a chance. They will even go to great lengths to avoid the neighborhood school.

In July, through the neighborhood list serve I got invited to attend the charter school exploration meeting. A group of parents were attempting to start a charter school to center on diversity. They wanted a Spanish program and a principal that was very invested in the neighborhood. After inquiring I discovered the local elementary school had not even been contacted. The one with a principal who left his high profile high school job and came back to his neighborhood to an elementary school where he immediately implemented a Spanish language program. Before starting their own charter school, not one person had bothered even contacting the school already in existence. The school that has made huge strides, and could do even better with some parents who had this kind of time and know how. No one was interested in the school of the neighborhood.

The same people who were questioning the school I picked for my girls and starting their own charter school, wanted to talk to me about the This American Life Podcast about segregated schools. They wanted to talk to me about things I already knew. Our schools are more segregated than they have ever been. Our educational system is deeply inequitable. Things are only getting worse. They shook their concerned liberal head in sadness wondering what they could do. Then they made sure their child got into the very white, pretty affluent charter school that is not representative of their neighborhood. When one didn't exist, they took their resources and began creating one.

When I am able to move past the anger, the frustration that people are talking about a school they know nothing about, I listen to what they say. Behind all the test score talk, the opportunity mumbo jumbo that people lead with, I feel like what is actually being said, and what is never being said is this: That school is too black.

The people who are moving into my neighborhood want their children to have a diverse upbringing, but not too diverse. They still want a white school, just with other non-white children also participating. They want to go to the Christmas pageant and not have their white sensibilities violated because the other parents are too loud and boisterous and it makes them uncomfortable, for really no good reason. They don't want their kid to notice her whiteness in Pre-k and then find out while addressing that question, that while they already own great books about diversity, the only children's books specifically about whiteness are published by the KKK. They don't want their child to ask them why Quintavious's sister says she doesn't like white people. They don't want to have to wonder when the teacher calls, if they are getting extra attention because white parents are often perceived as overbearing. They want diversity, just not too much.

And I get it. I do. It is hard to not always be comfortable in a place you had once thought of as completely familiar. It is weird when you and your child have some different cultural touchstones that you thought of as universal but are actually white (I am looking at you, birthday song.) It is kind of tricky to explain MLK day and black history month to a kindergartner who is the only one in her class that looks like the oppressor, the only kid that has benefited from the oppression being exposed. It is just way easier for white kids to talk about black history at a white school.

But why are we choosing easier and comfortable? White people get to be comfortable in most of American society. It took me until I was an adult to be somewhere white feelings were not centered. That stripping of privilege felt awful and unfair, even when it wasn't. My kids already know what that is like.

It is a gift for my kids to learn in an environment where their experiences are not the experiences of the majority of the kids in the room. Amidst the discomfort, the worrying about what to tell my kid when she asks complicated questions about race in her simple vocabulary, I have found so many gifts. My child does not look side-ways at non-white names. She is not perplexed by non-white hair. (She is perplexed by why her mother won't let her wear all those clicky and awesome beads.) She is talking about race, and it is not just for special occasions like MLK day or black history month. My child is getting a very good education in the classroom and on the playground. She knows about diversity because she is exposed to it, every day when we drop her off at school.

My neighbors and I don't have to build a charter school for our children to experience diversity. But we do have to build a charter school in order for our kids to experience diversity on our terms. Really, if we are experiencing diversity on white terms, what good is that diversity anyway?

I hear my neighbors saying they value my neighborhood, they value diversity, and they value all kids getting a decent education. I just wonder when they will value those thing enough to give our neighborhood school a try.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28992586)

Thank

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28998950)

black name in her article

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28993856)

Yeah if there's one thing we should all have faith in, it's the ability of communistic MFH Jewish women to solve America's race problems in a way that will end favorably for white people.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28994365)

Would love to see the comments on that statement.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28992716)

White Libs love diversity, they just don't want TOO much diversity.

Heaven forbid THEY become the minority in the room.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28992741)

They have no interest in actual economic or cultural diversity. Heaven forbid they go to school with a prole of any race.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28992831)

White Libs love the idea of diversity for purposes of social acceptance among other White Libs. They just don't want their kids to be drawn into hip hop culture or violence that will block acceptance to an Ivy.

Heaven forbid THEY let a very small percentage of the population force some worldview on them that gets them killed or unemployedpwned.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28992976)

http://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2964921&mc=9&forum_id=2#28562813

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28992781)

She literally got punched in her face the first day, and he spent MONTHS on the phone yelling at administrators trying to get her moved to a new school. Sometimes it's not racism.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28992819)

enroll your fucking kids in jiujitsu as early as you can. in many places that's 5. ESEPCIALLY if you have girls.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28994536)

However, most blacks ARE awful. Call it socioeconomics instead of race-based mental differences if you like, for purposes of this poast, but the problem is still there and whites would be smart to shun black schools like the plague.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28992963)

-no initiative

-tons of single parent households

-few role models outside of pro sports and entertainment

-short-term thinkers

-refuse to work together as a group to improve

-very little emphasis on education

-refusing to acknowledge their own faults while pointing fingers at everyone else

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28993170)

Racist assholes like you.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28997321)

If the school is in the suburbs, then the majority are going to be UMC.

Re-read what the other poaster typed.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28997306)

Also, there are so few middle class blacks that your hypo isn't useful

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28992874)

But I'm sure the other parents could offer a quick rebuttal with hard stats about the type of performance and problems that occur in the school her kid "adores."

The sad truth is that there will be immensely more violence, weapons and drugs her elementary school than the charter high school.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28992884)

flame

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28993588)

By the time dottr is in third grade but her class is still at first grade average progression while nearby white school's third grade kids are at fifth grade level then she's going to be having second thoughts about the wisdom of sacrificing her dottr on the altar of diversity.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28995637)

Since Australia is 92% plus white and almost all the remainder are model minorities like asians and indians what usually determines a school's quality is the socio-economic level of the families of the kids who attend.

Basically a school that has lots of poors will almost certainly do a lot worse than a school that's almost exclusively UMC kids.

There's a system of nation-wide testing called NAPLAN where every Australian kid in grades 3, 5, 7 and 9 sit standardised math and English tests. Parents get the results for their kids plus you can look up any school and see how well the school did on average.

The results are presented not only in absolute terms but also by comparison to schools of similar socio-economic level because its recognised that this is a key determinant to how well the school will do on these tests.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28997662)

Next year I was at my neighborhood school and none of the above ever happened again. Although, I was in a gifted and talented curriculum and just given instructions on what to do by the absent teachers while they spent all of their physical time with the remedial classes which consisted of 99% nonwhites."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28998945)

Particularly, the bus would stop at a high school first, and collect a diverse group of over achievers. Then it would stop at my elementary school, where my 6 year old self would inquire with this diverse group about the possibility of my sitting in a seat. Since I got off at the last stop, nobody would let me sit down, until the bitter end, when the bus driver came back and forced the issue. I still remember the bus driver’s name: Mr. Nichols. A lot of this diverse crowd smoked on the bus, and a common phrase heard on the bus was “Mr. Nichols is comin’”, as a warning to put the smoke out. It really was absolutely chaos. But I’ll never forget his name.

Anyway, I got my diversity training every day - the 18 year old high school kids loved to hold knives to my scrawny 6 year old white neck the entire trip, and threaten to slit my throat for around 45 straight minutes. My only offense was my existence, but it seemed like a fairly severe infraction.

My brother (twin brother) has always been the ‘deal maker’ out of the two of us. So he solved the problem. He found a black girl who was poorer than us - so poor that her only meal was the free one at school. So all we had to do was save part of our own lunch for her, and use it to ‘buy’ a seat next to her (we sat 3 to a seat on the crowded chaotic magic bus), and we would be left alone.

I hate to generalize about people and groups, or paint with a broad brush...but out of an abundance of caution, I would never deliberately seek out a majority black school. I’ve just made logical conclusions about first hand experiences in my memory banks. And my kids went to a fairly non-diverse school - ironically on the outskirts of Topeka, KS, at a sprawling school that serves all the kids from families that ‘white flighted’ out of very home of the Brown v Board decision."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28998976)

Also, it was 180 how racist the black kids were. It was a really interesting glimpse into how the black community views whites. These kids (named LaTavius, Dontrell, Beautiful etc) were obviously parroting shit their parents and other adult peers said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3020230&forum_id=2#28999004)