Why I Sent My White Daughter to a Black School

6th grade was hell. My daughter, who had thrived in her elementary school gifted program, was a cheerful 5th grader, bright in many ways. But middle school slung mud onto her brightness. It scuffed her confidence, smoothed her smiley dimples, and caused her head to hang at an unnatural angle, eyes suddenly fascinated with the floor. Academically, she was successful – straight A’s in advanced classes. Socially, she was lost. Emotionally, she was ill-prepared for the war that would be waged on her innocence. Mentally, she was completely spent on the very business of getting through each day and convincing herself to get back on the bus to the battleground each morning.

From her very first day, she would come to me with questions about what she had seen and heard. Heads up, mommas, middle school kids are nasty. Downright vulgar. I tackled the questions as best I could (although I do admit to playing dumb when we got to defining a few of the sex acts. I just couldn’t. She was 11!) She is so averse to foul language that the constant barrage of the F-bomb was exhausting for her. “Mama, it’s everywhere. It’s on all the walls in the bathroom. It’s every third word I hear in the halls. The teachers don’t even tell them to stop.” She claimed her teachers wouldn’t answer her questions in class because there was no time, which left her confused about her work and left us frustrated that she didn’t even have the moxy to be persistent about getting answers.

I stayed actively involved with the school and tried my hardest to communicate with teachers. You know what I found to be true? They admitted they couldn’t answer questions because they are too busy. They really don’t mind if the kids are cussing up a storm. They say the county won’t let them paint over the profanity in the bathrooms. I’ve got moxy coming out of my ears, but even I fizzled and gave up under the weight of their indifference. To be fair, she had a couple of gems – teachers who cared and still had the energy to make a positive impact on students. To be honest, she had a couple who needed a call from the superintendent to free up their future.

So when the expo of magnet programs available in our county came around, she was eager to see what was out there beyond the walls of her torture chamber. Of all the tables we visited, one was an easy favorite. She was drawn immediately to the students representing the program, the literature, their tri-fold board. Hook, line and sinker. This was where she wanted to be. But in our county, you have to apply to a magnet program and be selected by lottery. So we applied, and she began the countdown to lottery day. I spent weeks mitigating her enthusiasm, not wanting her to be disappointed if her name wasn’t drawn.

But it was. Sure as you please, she was picked. She was over the moon! She was going to escape her personal prison! We had only a week to accept the placement, so we set an appointment to meet with the program coordinator at her new school straightaway. I was to meet her and my husband at the school, so I looked up the address.

Oh, dear…

Is that right? That looks like a sketchy area. I work about a mile from that address, and I work in a “rough part of town”. There was literally a dead body discovered in my office parking lot 2 weeks ago. This address is…well, it’s in the hood. I’m not sure I even want to drive there, let alone leave my baby girl there.

But she’s so excited. She’s so sure.

Just let me look up the grades and data. It’s an academic magnet, surely it has redeeming qualities, right? Hmmm…OK, so it’s not a magnet school; it’s a magnet program of just a few dozen kids in an otherwise normally zoned school. In a less-than-desirable zone. School grade? D. And in a student body of over 900 students, there were a total of 10 Caucasian students enrolled there last year. Ten. Not ten percent. Just ten. Hmmm again. Well, let’s go check it out and see what’s what.

En route to the school, I’m reassuring myself that God wouldn’t give her a passion for this school and the opportunity to attend only to make me have to squash her dreams. As I exit toward the school, I look imploringly to heaven for such assurance and see a billboard that reads:

Arrested? Call 1-855-OMG POPO.

OMG indeed. You can literally see the barbed wire fences of the county prison from the classrooms of her school of choice. My reservations were only marginally quieted by the 25 foot high fence that surrounds the athletic field. Nonetheless, I was determined to play this completely cool, like it was the best place she could have possibly picked. She’ll notice on her own, I thought. She’ll see that she’s out of place and the desire will squash itself.

She gets out of the car – I kid you not – in her Martin Luther King Jr, “Sharing the Dream” t-shirt. Lord, help me. Why on earth would that child have picked that shirt of all the shirts in her closet. Why today? She doesn’t know anything about this school’s demographics. She just woke up and thought it was a great day to share the dream, I guess. So in we go.

The director of the program gave us a tour of the school, including taking us into some classrooms to see the program in action. Yes. You have it imagined right. The door to the classroom opens and our very white party of 3 is escorted into the room. One dressed for office work, one in shorts and flip-flops, and the little lady rocking MLK like it ain’t no thing. Good grief. During the entire tour, we saw one white educator and zero white students.

Ze. Ro.

Upon leaving the school – all 3 of us feeling great about the program, mind you – I asked her what she thought. I expected her to immediately point out that which was obvious to me. Instead, she liked that they recycle, the bathroom walls weren’t written on, and they have stairs.

Well now. There you have it. She’s in love.

Thus began an interesting few days of discussion between my husband and me regarding how we really feel about really important things. Things like race, education, safety, academics, and logistics. And at the end of the day, one thing was more important than all the rest: our daughter’s happiness.

She wanted this. Badly. We want her to know that we trust her instincts and that she should too. So – on the very last day we could accept her spot on the roster – we did just that.

The end of summer loomed large. I was terrified out of my mind dropping her off on the first day. They’ll tease her. They’ll call her names. She’ll say something insensitive without knowing it. She won’t fit in. It’s tough enough starting middle school as a 6th grader when everyone else is new, but she’s a 7th grader! The other kids will already have friends and cliques. Who’s going to invite the new girl to their table when they are so excited to see each other after a summer apart? It’s going to be a train wreck.

But get this…later that day I picked up a happy middle schooler.

Have you ever seen one? I hear they are rare; but they are breathtaking. I pulled into that car loop and was greeted with a zillion gigawatt smile. Before class had even started, some girls had invited her to sit at their table in the cafeteria until the bell rang. There was a scheduling snag, but she totally handled it with confidence and didn’t let it ruffle her feathers. Within the first few days, she was talking of new friends, a boy who was a little sweet on her, teachers who were invested in her success, and kids who took the time to ask her what was wrong if she was a little quiet or zoned out for even a few minutes. There isn’t much cussing in the halls, and no profanity in the bathrooms. It’s perfection.

In case you are wondering, she did eventually notice she doesn’t look like the other kids. But in the next sentence she also pointed out there seemed to be more girls than boys, so the girls “are probably going to take over and kick all the boys out”. We still have weird middle school conversations. But instead of deciphering sex jargon, I have to explain why some girls can suddenly show up with long hair one day (or why they are so fascinated with her hair that a girl literally smelled it one day), why a kid is walking around with a comb in his hair (no, he has not forgotten it’s there), and what it means to get ashy (shout out to my college roommate for teaching me this one). I almost missed the days of having to explain sex acts when it came time to tackle why other kids are using a word she can never, ever use. I tried referring to it as ” the n-word”, but she didn’t know the word I meant. I literally couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud. I am so conditioned to avoid it that I had to spell it and go with a “sounds like” approach. When I explained that it’s worse than the F-Bomb, her eyes grew as wide as saucers. She didn’t even know there was a whole hidden category!

She does have one white classmate (out of all seven classes combined). She is cognizant that she stands out. I’ve encouraged her to remember that feeling for the rest of her life. You see, although I feel comfortable asserting I’m not racist, I’m equally comfortable admitting I’m race-aware. Last year, the kids and I were invited to attend church with a friend. We were the only Caucasian family in a sanctuary full of African Americans. I’m normally a pretty self-confident person, comfortable in my own skin; but I was suddenly preoccupied with what other people thought of me. I worried they were all looking at us, wondering why we were there and who had invited us.

Get over myself, right?! I mean, really, who did I think I was that anyone in that room gave a flip about me?

In reality, they probably didn’t give me a second glance. But I left that night knowing something I’d not previously admitted to myself. I do see color…when I’m the one standing out. I don’t take note of the ethnicity of every person in the room, so long as it’s diverse. But I gained a unique perspective that night: if there is one person in the room who is different than the rest – even if the rest of us really and truly don’t notice – THEY notice. I’ve been the only woman in an all-male business meeting countless times. I’m aware of it. My husband has been the only guy in the theater when taking me to a chick flick. He feels out of place. Whether you have spots in a world of dots, or stripes in the land of swirls, when you are the odd man out you’ll be acutely aware and preoccupied as to whether or not everyone else also notices (which of course, they don’t). My opportunities to learn this lesson didn’t come until adulthood. My daughter, though? She is learning it every single day. I implore her regularly to never lose that lesson. I want her to be empathetic to others, and now she will be. For she will know what it is to be different, and she knows now that different can be the very best place to find your happiness

So why did I sent my white daughter to a black school? Because that’s where she wanted to go. And if she was brave enough to be her spotty, striped self in a sea of different faces, then I didn’t have a reason to say no.