7 Comments
Sep 21, 2022Liked by Courtney Martin

Yes to we need more white people just doing it so that it becomes normal and not something to be overly celebrated or thought of as brave.

Here in a very multicultural/ multi ethnic Scarborough, Ontario, we sent our children to the local public schools, as do the vast majority of our friends and neighbours. I taught 25 years in local public schools . It has been only in the last few years that I really understood how different things are in the US educational system.

Based on my experiences, and those of my children, you are right, Courtney. People just need to do what you said and make it be normal by the sheer volume of those choices.

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Sep 21, 2022Liked by Courtney Martin

Thank you for sharing your experience. It would have bugged me also, because it suggests that too many people have a really fictional, negative, infuriating concept of what little kids are like who are not white.

You are absolutely right that there is tremendous public value in people's getting the word out there of what integrated schools are actually like in terms of the school culture.

Integrated schools may indeed have fewer financial resources, which begs for advocacy to alter the funding structure in school districts so as to reduce the funding disparities that exist.

I am going to start taking the newsletter for Integrated Schools. Good reminder. I am heading right to the website now.

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Sep 21, 2022Liked by Courtney Martin

When I had my sons (now 25 & 23), we lived in Valley Stream, NY, a suburb on the border of NYC. Like you, I wanted my kids to be schooled in a place that shared the demographics of the area. We learned about the Sic religion and went to 6 year old birthday parties that had wedding cakes. Friday afternoon playdates were no goes with my sons' Muslim friends. We learned so much.

Unfortunately, the teachers were a problem. I felt the mostly white faculty were showing favoritism to my Caucasian kids. It was a tough subject to bring up in parent/teacher conferences. My older guy really felt he was as special as his teachers built him up to be and this worried me. Was he really gifted? Why did my younger son get to bring home the class hamsters? No other family wanted them? When we had to move to be closer to my sick father, the new district was lily white. Here my older guy turned out to be gifted as well and he never forgave his dad and me for "caving." Since high school most of his friends are from India, Iran, China, not the US.

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"Some of us treat going to White schools as a great honor and opportunity for Black and Brown kids, when in fact, it can be a very complex experience—physically, psychologically, and pedagogically." In my teaching to college and grad students about the failures of Brown v. Board, and school desegregation and school integration, I emphasize that many white people think whiteness is the norm and the Holy Grail, and that includes the predominantly white institutions, aka public schools, that we've self-segregated into. Reflecting on this further as a white public school parent in Chicago, I've observed that these predominantly white schools are the ones that the district and then parents label as "the best in the city" and self-congratulate ad nauseam for "turning around" and "making it the school it is today." So it's not even *some* of us who act like it's a gift for students of color to be part of these schools -- it's most of us, and it's baked into white supremacy culture.

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I love to read your posts about OUSD. This one particularly captures my OUSD experiences. I'm also a White mom of White kids and my kids have been at majority Brown/Black schools, integrated schools and a White school within OUSD. I consider myself fortunate that no one has directly told me I'm "brave" so send my kids to minority White schools, but I do get looks that probably are meant to convey that. However, I feel like my kids are getting a great education in OUSD and consider that the open secret about Oakland public schools. And, I definitely think that Black and Brown students have a much more difficult time at White majority schools (systemic racism) than White kids have at schools that are Black and Brown majority. I have seen that first hand.

One thing that confounds me is that White and other wealthier Oakland families never appear to consider what they might miss if they didn't go to their local Oakland public school. Things like learning about perseverance, advocating for themselves in a world that won't care that they are smart, special kids when they get out in the larger world. Like Courtney says in today's post, learning to stick up for yourself and your needs and ideas in just part of the curriculum when you have a lot of Black and Brown kids and teachers. Teachers let the kids know that the world isn't going to always welcome them with open arms and give them everything they need. They will need to advocate for themselves and not give up.

OUSD schools are also set up around the concept of trauma and are prepared to accept and support the kinds of kids that come from both high resourced and lower resourced neighborhoods within Oakland. In my opinion this benefits everyone. It makes the communities more accepting of kids and everything they bring to the school, not less. Yes, it means that there are kids, like an Assistant Principal at Skyline said, that need food for their families and kids that need a schedule filled with only advanced courses. Of course, this stretches resources, but I feel that the benefits outweigh the downsides.

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May I suggest that for white folks, they find a black friend, a real friend, and then another, and another. It will make, for them, an easier and less fraught transition to all manner of institutional engagements, such as neighborhood public schools or other community organizations that are more inclusive of all. It means that one, in valuing the friendships and connections, can more easily listen, understand, connect in genuine ways, without an internal 'voice' of how am I doing?

As a white women I've been fortunate to live in integrated situations where inter-racial connections and friendships were part of the fabric, easy. Trust me when I say: do find a friend and another, and another. Hannah MacLaren

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