Keep calm and don't White flight

I love positive affirmation. Who doesn't? But I also get that the design of social media allows us to present ourselves only in a positive light. Even when we write about our weaknesses, we are afforded the exact words, phrasing, and humor to make ourselves seem just slightly less than perfect.

So in that spirit, I would like to invite all of you over to my house each weekend to see me cry, threaten to quit everything, and go back on all my principles.

Can't make it? Okay, here's the next best thing:

That time I freaked out and applied to a magnet school.

For those of you not from St. Louis, you should know that a magnet school, true to its name, is a school designed to attract White families to St. Louis Public School (SLPS) district and St. Louis City. Like a magnet. Get it?

It's sounds kind of far-fetched now that we are all "post-racial" (or not), but it wasn't at the time of it's creation. Magnet schools were part of the desegregation program, the Voluntary Interdistrict Transfer Program (VICC), begun in the 1970s. The program had a few goals: 1) increase White student population in the city, 2) increase Black student population in the county, and 3) increase the number of Black teachers. Unfortunately, the last objective has failed miserably. But a limited number of White students did come to the city. However, the Black students who left the city to go to school in the county were the predominant participants of this program, and they continue to be.

*Read "Stepping over the color line: African American Students in White suburban schools" by Wells and Crain for an in-depth look at this phenomenon in St. Louis.

At this point in time, very few White students come from the county into the city. Middle-class White people have been slowly moving back into the city, and magnet schools serve as their first choice for their children. Also, getting into a magnet school requires entering a complicated lottery system. The result is the resegregation of SLPS, as parents with high-status networks navigate the complicated system of magnet and charter schools.

For example, in the Lafayette Square area (i.e. gentrified, upper-class neighborhood) word on the street (i.e. my mother-in-law) has it that a bunch of upper middle-class families (i.e. mostly White) were going to leave the city if they couldn't start a charter school for their kids. In the end, they were able to start a charter school, so we can enjoy their tax dollars for years to come.

Do I sound cynical? Yes, that would be my principles talking.

Because when reality meets my principles, apparently I freak out. Only a few weeks into sending my son to the neighborhood school, I panicked. He was having a really hard time adjusting to school. I felt that the school might not have all the resources that he needed. And so I applied to a magnet school.

Now again, the lottery system is super complex, so to increase your odds of getting in there are a few tricks. Apply early. Select your top two choices carefully. Alter your racial identity if needed. No, seriously, that is the advice that White parents have suggested, only sort of jokingly. Because that last one is illegal.

After I had carefully weighed my options, entered my choices, and maximized the possibility of getting selected, I submitted my application. And then I did some actual research about the magnet schools.

And oh, my gosh, I just replicated the research on school choice.

As a middle-class, White parent, I relied primarily on the reputation of schools rather than concrete information. And what I found in terms of information was disheartening.

While it is true that Metro and Kennard are at the top of the state in terms of test scores, there are quite a few magnet schools that are "failing" according to MSIP, the state accreditation organization. Additionally, the schools that have been labeled as "failing" are also the schools which White middle-class parents have mostly abandoned. Curiouser and curiouser.

This realization shocked me back to my principles. It made me angry. Because while I know you can't tell the whole story from an MSIP score or MAP test results, you would be hard pressed to convince the general public of that. What they see in terms of statistics is what they believe. At the same time, it was a reminder that school quality is largely a social construction. And magnet schools have been perceived as yet another magic bullet, when in fact, they are not.

It made me realize that my son is just a well off in a neighborhood school that actually has a passing MSIP score. And it reminded me that my school is what I put into it. As much as we have already invested in the school in terms of time and money, we will have to stick around for the long haul to see the pay off. Because school reform is a long, slow burn. Solidarity is a commitment.

This leads me to my final point. I had a conversation with a friend recently who suggested that I am really advocating for gentrification. In other words, sustainable social justice requires some that people with resources to join arms with people who have fewer resources. At the time, I internally resisted but couldn't see the nuance for all rehabbers. Here is my delayed come-back.

Absolutely, there is a place for privileged folks like me. However, I see gentrification as a move to replace the local population with privileged people. Solidarity, on the other hand, focuses on low turn-over rates and sustainable growth. It's a subtle, but important different.

So to all my White and middle-class people working for social justice in marginalized spaces (and to myself):

and solidarity on.

Autobiography Pt. 7: Antiracism

I recently have been asked by a few people about how I became interested in antiracism.  In helping myself move forward, I realize that I need to look back.  Also, I hope to convey the sense that I too am on a journey; I am a work in progress.  This is part of my story. 

I think I’ve always wanted a message.  When I was very young, perhaps five years old, maybe so young I only remember because my mom told me the story, I told my mom, “I want a burden.”  I had heard people in church say very solemnly to each other or from the pulpit that God had given them a “burden” for this person or that cause.  It sounded exciting and important, so I decided that I wanted a “burden,” too.   

This would possibly explain my second ambition in life besides being Mexican, which was to be the President of the United States.  I eventually came to realize that not only was it unlikely that I would become the President, but I also saw that perhaps it wasn’t the only way to change the world.  I spent a few years in a non-profit prayer ministry, where I decided that prayer was the only way to change the world.  When circumstances forced me to get a paying job, I decided that I could do something, too.  I eventually trained to be an ESL teacher, and thought that it could be the mission I was looking for.  Teaching very privileged ESL students, however, didn’t feel like changing the world.  My boss and I often commiserated about our move away from social activism.  I think this is why the service-learning component became so important to both of us.   

Only a few short months after deciding to change my research focus in my Ph.D., I found myself standing in front of a small but attentive audience.  I could feel my face flush, and I was consciously taking breaths of air, but I plunged ahead.  I watched the audience respond as I spoke, sometimes with amazement, sometimes nodding in agreement, sometimes shaking their head with remorse.  In some ways, this presentation was the culmination of many years.   

Mostly, I wondered how it could be that I was educating people about “race” and racism, when I had only just begun this topic. To top it off, I was presenting in the building where I attended church on Sunday mornings.  I marveled at the turn of events.  For years, I had wanted to be the one teaching from the front.  However, I rarely saw women in this position, and if I did, they were much older than I was.  Now I was presenting as a doctoral student, which apparently meant I possessed the necessary credentials.   

I gave a historical overview of the social construction of “Whiteness” in the U.S.  At the end, people asked interested and concerned questions.   

“My husband is a White teacher in an all-Black school.  What can he do to be antiracist?”

“I go to an all-Black church.  The people say they have to ‘act White’ all week and just want a place to let down.  Is that contributing to segregation?”

 “So if people of color understand that racism still exists, but White people don’t, how can White people learn more about discrimination and racism?”

Everyone seemed to think I had answers, and to my amazement, I at least had opinions about all the questions they raised.

At the end, a Black man approached me, “Would you be interested in giving this presentation at the school where I work?  I don’t know if I would get away saying the things you said.” He hesitated, “I mean, you can say it, but if I say it…” I interjected, “Then you're the ‘angry Black person.’”  He nodded in agreement.  “I would love to come.  Just let me know,” I found myself saying, feeling a mixture of excitement at the speaking opportunity and frustration at the dynamics of privilege and oppression. 

My friends who had organized the conference posted their encouragement later on Facebook.  It was really thanks to their foresight and support that I had the chance to talk about what I had learned over the summer.  They had shared some of their own story at the conference.  For my friends, an interracial couple, the antiracist message was very personal. 

With the conference, I saw myself shift from insecurity to resolution as I was surrounded by people who also felt strongly about racism and segregation in this country.  The criticisms I had received slowly faded into the background, no longer the dominant voices in my head.  This was a message that could sustain me over the long-haul, through a Ph.D., into a career and beyond.  In my view, it is the critical message for this generation.  Racism has shaped our society in ways that many of us are unable to see.   This is a work I must undertake.

Autobiography Pt. 4: Sociolinguistics

I recently have been asked by a few people about how I became interested in antiracism.  In helping myself move forward, I realize that I need to look back.  Also, I hope to convey the sense that I too am on a journey; I am a work in progress.  This is part of my story.

I somehow managed to not take a linguistics class in my undergraduate or graduate studies.  As I attempted to join the professional world of ESL teachers, read scholarly journals, and discuss grammar with colleagues, I was often aware of my lack of terminology.  So one year into a doctoral program in I decided it might be a good time to fill in the gaps in my knowledge by taking an introductory linguistics course.   

The first few weeks of the course were mostly uneventful.  I reveled in the new terms revolving around morphology and phonology.  I drilled myself on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), something I always felt was missing over the years, especially when my ESL students all knew it and I didn’t.  But my favorite topic of them all is sociolinguistics.  

I think I should mention at this point that while the professor was once at the top of her field, she was at this time having some short-term memory issues.  So sometimes we got the same PowerPoint presentation three days in a row, for example.  By the time the professor launched into the sociolinguistics portion of the course, I was a little frustrated, to say the least.  One particular incident stands out in my mind that revealed my deep commitment to sociolinguistics, as well as an underlying antiracist streak that surfaced with unexpected passion. 

During the second half of the semester, we arrived at the part in the textbook which dealt with dialects.  There were several activities that asked students to “translate” British English into American English; the phrases were all Harry Potter excerpts.  On the next page, students were asked to “translate” similar phrases from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) to Standard American English.  These phrases were almost indistinguishable from popular slang as seen on TV, with a few example of AAVE grammatical structure thrown in.  

I didn’t pay much attention to these activities, but our instructor was fascinated. During one particular class period, we spent the majority of the time going over the answers.  She spent several minutes reveling over the different idioms from British English, asking us if we were familiar with each phrase.  “Do people really say this?”  The students seemed a bit confused by her questioning.  “Um… Mrs. Weasley does?”  

After spending a few minutes trying to explain to her the differences between the British phrase “to knock something up” and the American phrase “to get knocked up,” we moved on the AAVE phrases.  Again, the instructor repeatedly asked if we had heard these phrases and whether Black people really talked like this.  

After several rounds of this game, I finally commented, “I don’t know if we are the best people to ask about this, since we are all White.  I mean, we have heard these phrases, but…” 

“Oh, yes,” she replied, “You probably don’t really hear this kind of language since you are at this university and most people at this university are very educated.”

I felt slightly ruffled.  I should have known to take it easy on the arguing, since the turns of conversation would soon get lost in her fading short-term memory, but I went on, “Well, I don’t know if it has anything to do with education.  I mean, like the textbook says, dialects have to do with group solidarity and identity.  And every dialect is a fully comprehensive language, capable of any thought possible to humans, right? It’s only that some dialects are afforded more power than others" (Smitherman, 1985). 

“Oh, yes, that’s true.”

She didn’t seem very convincing, so I kept going, “And someone who is educated could use this dialect. In fact, most Black people who use this dialect code-switch to Standard American English.  That actually requires more mental resources than just speaking one dialect. 

“Oh, yes, code-switching, that’s right.  But of course, it’s mostly less educated people who speak this way.” 

At this point, I was having a hard time listening to what she was saying.  I was becoming agitated, mentally contemplating how to respond as the words came out of my mouth, “You know, I am finding your comments to sound really racist.”

“Oh, no, I'm not racist.  You are misunderstanding me.  I am just trying to explain… it’s just that these people don’t really make it to this university.”

I was now shaking.  Almost in an out of body experience, I saw myself packing up my books even as I thought, “Am I really going to walk out of the class?”  The instructor was still talking, but I was no longer contained within myself.  As if in a dream, I was up and walking across the room, as I mumbled something like, “I’m sorry… I’ll come back when I calm down.” 

I was across the lawn, walking fast before I realized I had actually left the building.  As I walked into the other building, the adrenaline let down but I was still shaking, my teeth chattering slightly.  I must have looked upset because the two instructors in the copy room stopped talking and asked what had happened.  I recounted the incident quickly, still shaking. The instructor shook their heads, “Wow, she is really losing it.  You know you don’t say those things.”  

“Right…” But there were questions looming in my head.  Wasn’t what she said wrong to believe, too? And why wasn’t anyone else upset at all?  Was I going crazy?  I felt crazy, but I also remembered the feeling I had in class.  What if there had been a Black student sitting there listening to the instructor go on and on?  How would that student feel?  And why did I feel the need to defend this hypothetical Black student?  

A few days later, I sat in the department chair’s office.  I had met with the chair a few times this semester to talk about how the class was going.  This time, I explained to him that I had walked out and why.  I wasn’t officially reporting this instructor, since I knew she wouldn’t remember what exactly had happened; in fact, a week later she didn’t recall the details of the incident.  As I finished the story, the professor leaned back in his chair, folded his hands and looked pensive. 

“Well, now, let’s think about what she actually said,” he intoned. “Nothing she said was factually wrong... but you were upset, in any case.  In my experience, the African-American students who have come to this university have been… well, deficient in their education.”

“But that has to do with the education system.  There are fewer opportunities in poorer neighborhoods and fewer schools to choose from… and discrimination…” I was fumbling for arguments that weren’t formulating clearly or quickly in my mind. 

“Yes, but everything you just said were reasons why they might be deficient. You haven’t disproved my initial statement.  Now, I know that that there are physical differences between the races, like a wider nose and lips.  I don’t know if there are mental differences,” he paused and stared at me intently. “I don’t think you do either.” 

I was painfully silent.  I didn’t know.  I couldn’t argue against him, even though his logic felt instinctively wrong to me.  The arguments were elusive and slippery.  I was surprisingly calm this time, as I felt resignation wash over me.  

Later someone congratulated me on walking out.  But I really felt inadequate and helpless.  I didn’t really feel proud of verbally sparring with an aging professor who was really very sweet and confused.  At the same time, I wondered why the other students in the class weren’t upset.  I also felt that there had to be some way to refute the argument that the department chair presented, but I just couldn’t work it out.  It wasn’t until much later, after several courses on racial identity, discrimination, and the social construction of racial difference that I started to put things together.

While I had a good foundation laid in sociolinguistics, I was sadly ignorant about the way racial difference is constructed socially.  Over the next summer, I saw Race: The Power of an Illusion, which documents how new genetic evidence has completely debunked the premise of essentialist racism, the idea that different "race" are biologically distinct and hierarchical.  As it turns out, only about 2% of our genetic make-up accounts for the way that we look, or our phenotype.  "Race" has been and is socially constructed through daily interactions and laws that determine who fits into which category.  Those categories are essentially arbitrary and have changed over the course of history, affording privileges to White people and denying privileges to everyone else.  So in this way, "race" has real consequences in terms of opportunities and life outcomes. 

That day, I was kind of like an untrained cannon firing wildly.  I didn’t have a plan of action to refute those kinds of comments in a more effective, less accusatory way. Sometimes it’s hard to anticipate those very physical and emotional reactions, though.  Maybe it was good for the other students to see my reaction to those comments, even though they didn’t seem to understand why I was upset.   The biggest lesson, though, was that I needed to get educated, so that next time--because there will be a next time--I will have something to say when it matters.

Autobiography Pt. 5: Protestants and Jesuits

  
References

• Herbes-Sommers, C., Strain, T. H., & Smith, L. (2003). Race: The power of an illusion [Television Series]. San Francisco, CA: California Newsreel & Independent Television Service.

• Race: The Power of an Illusion Website. (2003). PBS. Retrieved August 14, 2012, from http://www.pbs.org/race/   

• Smitherman, G. (1985). Talkin and testifyin: The language of Black America. Wayne State University Press.  

Autobiography Pt. 2: Cherokee Street

I recently have been asked by a few people about how I became interested in antiracism.  In helping myself move forward, I realize that I need to look back.  Also, I hope to convey the sense that I too am on a journey; I am a work in progress.  This is part of my story.

“We’ve found the house we want to buy!” I excitedly told our real estate agent over the phone one fall day in 2009.  “It’s on Cherokee Street, and we know the people who are selling.  It’s not even on the market yet, but this is the one.”  
 

“Well, we’ll keep looking.  I have lots of houses that are coming out on the market, and I’ll keep sending them your way,” she replied.  “This is the fun part, where you really get to shop around for what you want.”

“No, really, you don’t have to send any other houses… we really want this one.”

“Well, let’s see what it appraises for.  I mean, it is on Cherokee Street.  I think we will be able to get the value down.  Are you sure you want to buy in that ZIP code?”  

Right down to the point of closing on our first house, I wasn’t sure our real estate agent was convinced we had a good hold on reality.  She still comments to my in-laws how “unique” my husband and I are, how much she admires us.  I think she means it as a compliment, but it carries with it the same dubious tone that we get from other friends and family when they question us about the safety of the neighborhood. 

 At the time my husband and I got married, we were sure we should buy a house.  We weren’t exactly sure where we wanted to live in the city, but we knew we wanted to live in the city. It wasn't just about saving money on property taxes, although that was a nice perk. We sincerely thought that the city would be the best place to live and raise children.  We wanted to live simply. We had no desire to shop around for houses, though.  It was as if we were waiting for the right house to appear.  When some of our friends on Cherokee Street told us their parents were going to sell their house, we knew it was the one. It just felt right.  I told my husband, “This is antiracism.  We are moving against ‘white flight!’”(Tatum, 2003).

My history with Cherokee Street didn’t begin as an antiracist move, however.  In fact, my first encounter with Cherokee Street began with a search for the cultural “other” and ended in a traffic ticket from a very angry cop, who yelled at me something about “clueless kids who come to the city.”  In fact, I was a clueless city driver, and had unintentionally blown through a stop sign, not suspecting that there might be one on every block.  I had come to Cherokee Street the very same day I had interviewed the director of Hispanic Ministries with Catholic Charities as part of my senior thesis on Latin American immigration to Missouri.  She had commented that it was a “little Mexico” on Cherokee Street, and so as soon as I left her office, I headed in that direction.  I was disappointed to find that there were only a few Mexican markets.  I don’t know what I expected to find, but it was admittedly smaller and less Mexican than I had hoped.  

A few years later, my best friend bought a house on Cherokee Street in order to be close to an urban ministry located on the same street.  My friend and I had worked with this ministry, which focused on meeting the practical and spiritual needs of immigrants and refugees in St. Louis City.  I actually had been assigned to a different ministry to work with right out of college.  I was supposed to do office work in an urban development company.  When I realized the job was little more than filing, however, I quickly reassigned myself to the much more interesting job of accompanying my friend to visit refugee families from Colombia.  Again, my obsession with the cultural “other” obscured the systemic societal issues about which my mentors were trying to inform me.  

I moved in with my friend on Cherokee Street about a year later, and then when she got married, I moved next door.  My friend’s father owned the four-family flat adjacent to her house, and so I enjoyed the next few years with very low rent.  I also rode the public bus to school because my roommate used my car to go to work very early in the morning.  Since I worked very close by, I was able to use public transportation easily.  I prided myself on my bravery for riding public transportation, as well as walking home at night on Cherokee Street occasionally.  It felt like being back in Mexico, where everything was an adventure.  Of course, I had the luxury of a car on the weekends, when I would go out the county for church and other activities. On top of that, I didn’t actually know anybody else in the area besides my friends next door.  One incident stands out in my mind about my lack of integration in the neighborhood.  

I noticed racial patterns riding the bus.  Going up Grand Avenue, the bus was filled with Black folks, except for me.  As we went north towards the highways, more and more White people got on.  By the time we reached the MetroLink, the crowd was fairly diverse. I felt a sense of pride that I was so culturally “diverse” in my experiences.  One day, a White man got on the bus somewhere on Grand.  He started talking to people on the bus, cracking jokes, and pretty soon the whole bus was laughing.  He mentioned he was from another city.  As he got off the bus, people were still shaking their heads and laughing. 

I turned to the young Black woman sitting beside me and said with a chuckle, “You can really tell he wasn’t from around here.  I mean, we don’t talk to each other on the bus.” She replied, “I don’t know… I mean, I talk to people on the bus…”  I suddenly knew what I meant by “we.”  I quickly interjected, “No, you’re right.  I think I don’t talk to people on the bus… now that I think about it, I don’t think White people really talk to other people on the bus.” 

In fact, White people talked to other White people on the bus, but that fact eluded me at that moment.  Whiteness was completely invisible to me, and Blackness seemed overwhelming.  What followed was a mutually interesting conversation as the young woman and I walked home in the same direction.  We even exchanged phone numbers when we found out that we were more or less neighbors.  I never called her, nor did I see the young woman again, a fact that still pains me to admit.

These select anecdotes are  evidence of my pretense that I am a White person who "gets it."  I have taken pride in my urban life, when I really hadn't done the work to enter into solidarity with my neighbors.  I am not the only one.  You can read other places about young White folks migrating back to cities, as they abandon the vestiges of what they consider to be the empty, segregated and unsustainable suburban lifestyles of their parents.  However, the results in the city are not that much more integrated or fulfilling unless White folks make an effort to break out of their White social circles. I have to constantly reevaluate myself and the lifestyle I lead, who I hang out with, and where I want to end up.  This is my journey.  I may be off to a good start, but unless I'm intentional, I may end up standing still, or worse--going backwards. 

Autobiography Pt. 3: English as a Second Language



References

Tatum, B. D. (2003). “Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?”: And other conversations about race. New York, NY: Basic Books.