Thread by @IEMcElroy

Can I wade into some hot water here?

Sending your Black/Brown child to predominantly white private schools does not come without costs.

I would know. I was that Black child. My mom’s purest intentions of getting me a better education also left massive scars on my psyche.

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While these schools do truly offer the experience of a lifetime in many ways:

World class education (still fraught with historical inaccuracies but still top notch)
Once in a lifetime trips around the world
Small classrooms with attentive teachers

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They also are create a toxic environment for anyone who is not from the upper class.

The psychological trauma of being THE ONLY Black person someone knows results in an onslaught of racist comments/ behaviors from peers. Especially from the ones who claim to be progressive
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The diversity efforts were not for me. They were for my classmates. I was their token Black girl for whom they “learned” about racism from.

I was not given the leeway to be young and carefree. I had to represent all of Black America and be the voice.

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I had to sacrifice my mental health to educate them on why their beliefs were racist or why our textbooks were lying.

But I also was expect to modulate my emotions as not to upset my classmates or else I would be called to the headmasters office.

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Yes. My school had a headmaster.

But more than that I had to listen to the racist shit their parents said over dinner. I was different from “those public school Black kids”, but was I?

“those” Black kids they talked about were my brothers.

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Did I mention I couldn’t walk off campus by myself or with the other Black students? We learned to have our school IDs on us at all times to show to curious police officers who always seemed to just around the corner as we walked into town to the train station.

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Yep, most of us caught public transportation into the elite suburbs as we left our lower middle class/“ghettos” to sit alongside our peers in our mansion classrooms only to return home to be picked on by former friends for being “uppity” for speaking “white English”

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We left the safety and comfort of our communities for the “American Dream” equivalent of an education only to have a mirror held up to our own poverty/lack of resources that our parents worked diligently to hide from us. To be tokenized by our peers/administrations.

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To be asked by our friends parents “do you plan to apply to college?” Or see the uncomfortable faces as they thought of excuses why they didn’t want their child to visit your home. Dinner invites felt more like interrogations as you proved how “different” you were

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So yes, I got a world class education at my private schools. But let’s not pretend my life was golden. Because although they checked the diversity box:m, the equity and inclusion were painfully absent. And my and my Black/LatinX friends paid the price with our sanity.

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To this day we talk about the psychology burden we carried while attending our schools. And how we wish our schools back home had the resources they needed so badly. How we waiver at the idea of putting our children in public school to avoid them having to carry the burden.

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Private schools may give your child the education of a lifetime but they may also kill your bright, enthusiastic, curious, young Black child’s spirit.

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