How integrated was my school?
During my live as an African American women, I was blessed to live in the suburbs of North Austin for most of my live. The schools that I went to were only somewhat integrated with me and other minorities being celebrated for our differences. I had currently noticed in my elementary school was the typical stereotype of a Texas school where there is mainly white female teachers with a very few minorities students. It was not until I went into a character school that we had more minorities as my peers than before, but it was only at the cost of buying for my education and moving to a different neighborhood for better access to that school. It was nice to have more peers that I could relate to my peers.
The only way that I was able to attend these schools was because of the location of where my parents moved to and that was the case for most of my life. We constantly moved because of the price of rent going up as the property value was going up of the house we were living in. My middle class family is still moving around more than a White middle class family. There are friends that were their family was able to buy a house and stay there for years on years, while my family was pushed to move farther into a forming small town in North Austin.
I would say that my high school experience was similar because I was usually one of ten minorities in an AP class for both my Junior and Senior year at my local high school, but I was still the third African American student in the class. I can say there was more African American students in the whole school, but that could be the fact that there was 600 people within my class in general. I just wished that I had more African American educators because my school only had African American administrators that I was not in personal contact with to learn from. The effects of redlining were not obvious in my small town, but it could have been if I was more knowledgeable about the people in my community. It is interesting to talk about the effects of redlining now because we can understand why are our schools looked the way that they looked.
Hi Krista,
ReplyDeleteI myself never had to go through the same things that you did. It is hard to relate to your story because I myself never had to go through what you and your family did, and I am sorry for that. I grew up in white neighborhood in Houston that didn’t have a lot of minorities in it. I think it is such a paradox and very frustrating how those who grow up in better neighborhoods are almost automatically afforded the opportunity to go to better schools, and that affords them better lives. Redlining and moving around districts to “segregate” students based on racial class was once an extreme prejudice act that did has carried and help implications for a long time.
Hey Madison, I also think it is weird that a person's future can be determined by the location of their home and school because the government can change that for a single family. Especially because an African American family and other minority families have to push there why way into well-off neighborhoods, so their children to can have a better opportunity. I never had to experience any major discriminations, like other African Americans did in the 50s and 60s, because of the change of times, but even my mother experienced the racism of her neighbors when her family moved into a nicer neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois . I know that you have never experienced it, but I think by learning about it know you can now help others that are being effected by redlining by voting for my inclusive government officials. Thanks for the comment!
DeleteKrista Fishback
Hi Krista! Thank you for sharing a personal experience and giving us a real perspective on this topic. My schools in Austin also fell under the realm of having white female teachers and a majority white student body. You mentioned celebrating differences and it reminded me of a club we had at my high school called the multicultural alliance. Anyone could join, but it was mostly made up of non-white students who came together with the few non-white educators we did have to find ways to celebrate differences in our school. I never really noticed the effects of redlining as a child either, but I know look back and see how from school to school the diversity level changed a lot depending on who was zoned to what school. Great work!
ReplyDeleteHey Faith,
DeleteI do not think that any of schools had a club that was about multicultural differences because I believe that my high school did not care about highlighting the differences. I do not think it was in a bad way, more in like a "let's not bring politics or any other conflicts into the school environment," especially because I graduated in 2017. The one thing that I remembered, was the my middle school had a cultural night where students of different and same cultures would display that to us and their parents one night. I think that the reason that they had that was because it was a charter school run by an organization of people that were mainly from the Middle East or Turkey. They had a better grasp about how to showcase our differences and had a desire to do so. That school I do not believe was under the redlining category because it was a charter school and anyone could go there if they could afford it. It is interesting how diversity is subject to change depending on rather a family can afford to live where they want to be or the school itself. Thanks for the comment!
- Krista