More harmony, less hate starts with more diverse schools
As one of only a handful of black students at a Catholic school in West Palm Beach, I frequently wondered how to fit in with my white classmates and obsessively questioned whether I was being too black at any given moment.
This thought occurred all throughout my elementary years at Rosarian Academy, where I was careful not to show my white classmates too much of my black culture so as not to make them feel uncomfortable. Every aspect of my culture which I brought up, from the kinks of my hair to my mother’s cooking, seemed not simply strange but completely foreign to my classmates.
This all changed when I went to Bak Middle School of the Arts and G-Star School of the Arts, two Palm Beach county schools that have a large minority attendance. At these schools, for the first time in my life, I sat in classes where I wasn’t the only person of color in the room. Being with all these other minority students, I finally felt like I could openly express my own culture. I finally was able to talk about my cultural heritage in a way that wasn’t looked at as strange.
I’m sharing my experience because this year marks the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court that declared racial segregation in schools to be unconstitutional. It’s also the 60th anniversary of the Youth March for Integrated schools, in which 25,000 individuals marched on Washington D.C. to support the effort for desegregation of schools in the United States.
Sadly, schools today remain heavily segregated. A report earlier this year found that more than half of the nation’s schoolchildren are in racially concentrated districts, where more than 75 percent of students are either white or nonwhite.
The issue of integration of schools is being revisited, too, in the Democratic presidential primary campaign. Witness the testy exchange over the decades-old school busing controversy between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris of California.
I believe my experience shows the benefits of integration and diversifying the classroom for all races and ethnicities.
At Rosarian, one of the worst experiences was, sadly, learning about the history of slavery.
I learned that the only way for me to close the gap between my peers and I was to forsake my culture. When these lessons were being taught, I felt like the big black elephant in the room. It was almost as if everyone were avoiding eye contact with me. I was more embarrassed of my cultural heritage because of the way my peers avoided the topic with me, than I was angry that this had happened to my forefathers.
Black history month was equally uneasy for me. I felt more ostracized than ever. A whole month was devoted to how different I was from every single other person in my grade. Throughout each school day of this month I felt the alienation from my classmates. It wasn’t due to prejudice that I was made to feel this way, but unfamiliarity with someone of a different ethnicity or race. Due to these experiences, I eventually learned to stifle my black identity and black culture.
That was not my experience at Bak Middle School of the Arts and G-Star School of the Arts, where there’s a greater mix of students of all races and ethnicities.
I vividly remember talking about the Motown artist, like Gladys Knight and Smokey Robinson, who I had grown up on with other black people for the first time. I was so surprised they had heard of them, simply because I was used to bringing up the music from my home life and having no one know who or what I was talking about. Only I was brought into these environments where I could embrace my heritage did I finally learn to celebrate my blackness.
In contrast, at Rosarian, only after I separated myself from my identity did I begin to successfully interact with my fellow students and even make friends with my mostly white peers.
No child should have to grow up believing that their cultural heritage is a strange thing, nor should any child have to hide their identity around their peers. If our schools were more diverse, racially and ethnically, this would not have to happen. If children were able to mingle with people of differing cultures from a young age, minority students would never have to hide such a large aspect of their personalities.
If all racial and ethnic minorities were to let go of their cultural identification, as I did, each culture would be lost, swallowed up by the prevailing white narrative. Instead, we must foster a better understanding of all racial and ethnic cultures to create more unity and less division. Only then can our nation live in more harmony and with less hate, and only then, will a child grow up not feeling strange for talking about their own culture.