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We just bought a “new†(well, actually, it’s old, and my sister named it “Chateau Travolta†because its décor looks straight out of 1977) house in the suburbs of Kansas City. We’ll be moving there in a few weeks, and the little angel will be starting a new school. I haven’t stepped inside this school yet, because I researched it, talked to the director on the phone for an hour, got a referral from a trusted co-worker whose niece goes there, and then sent my beloved to check it out. Yes, I let him make the final decision based on his observation – he’s a very involved dad and really does make about half of our parenting decisions. That said, I forgot to ask him to check out the racial diversity of the school.
It’s something I would’ve noticed, but I’m not sure he did. He didn’t mention anything about it when he came home – he focused more on the adequate playground equipment, the cleanliness of the classrooms, the student/teacher ratio and whether or not the children had set fire to the school shortly before he got there. (They had not.)
We’ve always lived in the city – at least, we have since we’ve lived in Kansas City. We’re both originally from small (in his case, population 450) towns in Iowa, where racial diversity is not possible to achieve in schools, mostly because it doesn’t exist in the towns. I’m not really sure why. Most people who live in small towns in Iowa were born there, and maybe this has just gone on ever since the Norwegian, German and Irish immigrants showed up and squatted on the land like good Americans should.
I wish there had been more racial diversity in my school when I was a kid. It is very difficult to base an opinion on anything other than textbooks and media when real people with higher levels of melanin than you have aren’t sitting next to you in class. I grew up uncertain how to act around people who weren’t white, because I didn’t know more than one or two who weren’t. I realize what a loaded thing this is to write, but it was my reality. It was my husband’s reality. Since we’ve become adults, we’ve lived in mostly black, mostly Hispanic and now racially diverse neighborhoods. We didn’t sit down and say, “let’s be the only white people on Central Street,†but on the other hand, we didn’t let it stop us when we found a beautifully remodeled second-floor walk-up when we were living in sin. We’ve sent the little angel to daycares with black, white, Asian and Hispanic teachers. She has friends of other races. She’s not uncomfortable around anyone. And now I sit here, chewing on my lip and hoping that doesn’t change.
Kansas City is a much bigger place than my hometown. The suburb we are moving to has an excellent school district with a huge high school. I’m hoping the size of the suburb and its school system will mean it attracts all sorts of families of different races. I want my daughter to be surrounded by kids of all races. I want her to have teachers of all races. I think it’s important. If she doesn’t, I think I’m going to have to seek out extracurricular activities that will give her good role models and peers of all colors. I worry if she doesn’t, she’ll end up like me, serving as a rush counselor for an all-black sorority at the University of Iowa and not knowing what to say about the whole thing, not believing we had “traditionally black†sororities still in 1994. We had a few girls of different races in my "not traditionally black" sorority, but the University of Iowa in the early ‘90s was probably only about 10-30% minority. I’m sure this is shocking to those of you reading from the coasts. The Midwest, particularly the upper Midwest, is white, white, white. Hi! We’re white.
We don’t speak a lot of languages here, either. The only language (other than English) I hear with any sort of regularity is Spanish. When I hear people speaking Spanish to their children, I try to understand what they’re saying. I took Spanish up through college, but that doesn’t mean I’m
