Middle Passage

Hopefully you remember my love letter to Drew and my angst surrounding “cutting it” for the both of us (see Mommy’s Love Letter to Drew, Thursday, February 17, 2011). What parent, especially a mom, especially a single mom, doesn’t fret at least a tad about their child’s well-being, education, future?

The middle school teen years have been more of an adventure than I was prepared for. It’s just that the onslaught of hormones came with such a vengeance and caught me off guard.

It felt like it happened overnight.

I woke up one morning and saw a young woman in the bathroom with a bangin’ body and mad attitude.

I said, “Damn, girl! You kinda fine but who are you and what have you done with my princess?”

With this natural progression came the need to transition from the shelter and innocence of elementary school to the mean streets, I mean hallways of middle school.

Those of us in the DC metropolitan area wrestle with public schools that we find wanting even though we pay a king’s ransom in property taxes. So we opt for a private school whose cost matches or exceeds our monthly mortgages.

I don’t know about those of you who have searched for private school but when I began my search, I was completely overwhelmed by the process.

There were applications, open houses, shadow days, interviews, essays, and standardized tests.

The cost of going through this process fore each school matched my car payment.

So we jumped through these hoops more than a few times; rolled up on campuses that rivaled many an Ivy League school in beauty, expanse, amenities, and endowments; and learned that one year’s tuition exceeded the cost of my entire undergraduate education.

For seventh grade!

We finally settled upon a school that was kind of in between but we still had no idea what we were in for.

Drew was one of seven African Americans in the entire middle school. Mind you, the school proudly touted that this was its most diverse middle school class since its inception in the late 1960’s. This should have been a red flag as this diversity included everybody who’s not white so you know how quickly those numbers dwindled when you considered Black kids alone.

Nevertheless, they seemed liberal, inclusive, tolerant, and enlightened enough. So we gave them the old college try.

Drew quickly became the darling of her teachers and classmates. She excelled academically, played sports, and sang and danced in the school play. She was also invited to birthday parties and bar mitzvahs that always included raised-letter invitations to houses on the water and members-only country clubs. With wide eyes, Drew and I would drive up to these houses and venues in our 2005 Honda Civic missing one hubcap and say, "Who knew?!"

Woven in between this idyllic scenario, however, were throw-back racial experiences that we truly did not expect. There was everything from being asked by a white boy if he could call her “nigger” now that they were friends to being spat upon by a white girl in frustration during a PE scrimmage (to be fair, they were both talking trash but still…).

It must also be noted that her self-esteem and self image took a beating since her gorgeous sister big‑boned body was surrounded by pencil -thin white girls who thought they were fat.

So what’s my point?

Granted, we all want the best for our children. But when did sacrificing our children’s emotional and social well-being for the sake of fitting in with the “right” people and getting into the “right” schools become the barometer of success?

I’m not saying don’t strive for the best. I believe we should take advantage of every single opportunity out there because the world is our oyster and we deserve every seat we’ve earned at the table.

BUT

I am wondering if subjecting our African American children to the soul-stripping world of white elitism is healthy? Necessary? Is that a requirement for knowing how to so-called successfully navigate the two worlds all of us Black folk inhabit?

And how do we define successfully navigate?

Is the goal of educating our children to churn out corporate capitalistic clones or well-rounded, well‑grounded, thinking, creative, human beings with a conscience? A desire to contribute?

I hope I don’t sound too preachy. It’s just my passion and my own unanswered questions as I conduct my own assessment.

One more thing:

My perception (i.e., not the gospel) of our community pre- and during the Civil Rights era is that we were so strong in our identity, so knowledgeable of our history and culture, and so surrounded by love that we were able to leave our sanctums, go into a cruel Jim Crow world, and come back with our essence, our souls  intact. Even when we were battered and bruised emotionally and physically, we knew we could always come home and be fortified. Be reassured of who we were, what we stood for, where we were going, and why.

Succeeding meant lifting up the self and the whole. It was a complete package – moral fiber and money; pride and prosperity; faith, fidelity, and fortune. It was more than bling and things that, if examined closely, may actually convey a deeper sense of self-loathing I am sure many of us are not even conscious of.

So I suppose this is my long-winded way of saying let’s take stock. For me, the jury is still out on the notion of sacrificing the innards of my child in order to guarantee success for those of "us" who have made. Just doesn’t sit well with me.

But I am still looking, learning, researching, and evaluating.

After all, we have high school in the fall.