Nice White Parents

[Sugarintheplum]

This podcast has been fascinating. Has anyone else been listening?

I've long seen that reflected in my life / kids lives. But what I am still lacking is an understanding of the thought process these parents go through.

For example, I used to send my children to a very diverse tap / ballet /drama class where I lived previously. It was very mixed ethnically. Lovely lovely place. Where I live now the classes are more expensive (the area is still very diverse), and the kids who attend these classes are more than likely white and middle class. I yearn for other kids who look like my kids to join for a myriad of reasons. There IS a ballet school in this part of town that has the stated mission to improve representation of ethnic minorities in ballet through the adult core to the school for children. There is a waiting list BUT STILL white parents send there kids there. This means ethnic minority children are waiting while white children take up the place. I see that and honestly wonder what the parents are thinking. And this is just a tiny example, but it happens in other aspects of life, too.

It needs to be explained to me because I'm truly lost!

@CuriousaboutSamphire

Yes of course. When in the long run, the world is over this shameful centuries long patch of racism, it'll be a nonsense to even conceive of such things. But alas that is not today.

I think the comparison with female-only spaces is too simplistic as there is such a diversity of BAME people but only two sexes.

My initial thought with this thread is that any child should be able to attend any class, with no discrimination of any kind, but I do get that if you are a child who is constantly in the minority it might be nice to be in the majority at least some of the time. But I'm really not sure how you achieve this, in a majority white country, without being accused of discrimination. Very tricky.

@PapaPoule

yes, could be that I'm not being clear. I'll bullet:

• There is a ballet school
• Ballet school's mission is to celebrate Black ballet dancers
• White parents send their white children there
• Black children languish on the waiting list

I wondered what might lead white parents to send their white children to said ballet school.

I’d take them to a class that wanted to promote diversity because that’s the kind of atmosphere I’d like my children to be in and the values we would promote.

Unlike a lot of people on this thread I think a BAME-only ballet school, or a ballet school that explicitly gave preference to BAME students (for instance by reserving a certain number of places just for them) are fine and could be good and positive steps given underrepresentation of BAME dancers. I just don't think that declaring that you 'celebrate' BAME dancers and expecting white parents to know that they shouldn't send their children there is reasonable, and nor do I actually think that it's what the school - as opposed to the OP - wants.

A waiting list is fair. It should not matter on the child’s ethnicity.

I would have thought it is a good thing to have a mixture rather than a separate group. If it is exclusively BAME that does not seem positive. If a parent thought I do not want my child to go there because the majority are BAME surely that would negative.

@vargas

Could achieve it by starting a ballet school with the stated mission to celebrate black dancers?

@Hodge00079

Positive for whom?

Ok, got to go.

Thanks all for your responses.

Have you asked the school about their policy? It may be that they allocate X% of the places to BAME kids and the rest to white kids- where the X% is much higher than the proportion of the population that BAME represents? Therefore meeting their mission statement and encouraging relationships between the different ethnicities.

The bullet is helpful, but I'll repeat my answers.

• It's cheaper.
• It's closer.
• Their children have friends there.
• It's better.

And I'll add a fifth. Perhaps, shock horror, these white parents don't really give a damn about the colour of anyone's skin and just want the best school for their kids.

Interesting emotive use of language too. Black children "languish" on the waiting list. Is there any proof that the directors of the school are operating on anything other than a first-come, first-served basis ?

It's up to the school who they accept. Of their aim is to welcome diversity, then that's what they are doing by accepting all children and not prioritising on the basis of ethnicity. To do so would be racist.
Be careful what you wish for. Surely the best thing for society is for everyone to mix and for no one to be brought up thinking of themselves or other as more/less important.
If you want bame kids to be pushed up the list at the expense of white kids, the flip side of that is the creation of an argument that it's equally okay to promote white kids at the expense of black ones.
Agree with pp - segregation never ends well.

Why are white families further up the list than non white?

I'm a white mum with a black child

If the ballet school says is aiming to increase participation of BAME children, that does not say to me that it is for BAME children only and that white children are therefore excluded.
I think there would be an issue if white children were automatically first on the waiting list but I expect its first come first served.
My son is a scout, the only black boy in his psck. The scout movement wishes to increase BAME participation - this does not mean its aiming to become a BAME only organisation
My employer wishes to be more inclusive, this does not mean that white people should not work here
Same principle surely

Is this in your town or an example from the podcast?
Just wondering if everyone was actually white...If my Italian DM looks after DS1 he looks like an Italian DC with a tan (so white). He's actually half Filipino but he has brown rather than black hair and European features. He looks mixed race standing next to me because I have blue eyes and blond hair.

It sounds like a very interesting podcast though!

I'm not sure your inverted example works unless you also invert around 500 years of international history.... My point was that in poorer areas of the cities I lived in (Bolton, at that time, if anyone is wondering) the separatism was either absolute or non existant, depending on which area you lived in.

The mixed areas seemed to be far nicer places. As a kid I was always a stranger, we moved at least once every school year, so I have a lot of experience in fitting in and the spaces that were most comfortable were the most mixed, ethnically.

I've said on other threads, prompted by a poster whose name I didn't remember. I was brought up in the era when not seeing skin colour was the cure for racism and othering. In all of the schools I went to, CofE one and all, rural one room school houses and inner city comprehensives alike, we all sang Kumbaya and The Child is Black, the Child is White and believed that we were all the same under the skin as well as under the sun. That 500 years of international history was being addressed and hugged into pleasantness.

A decade later we were gender bending and androgenous and didn't equate make up with female etc. Had no truck with the idea that clothes made the man and all that.

Now, after 20 - 30 years of supposed progress, we seem to have forgotten all of that and are making new rods with which to beat ourselves. And I don't understand it because my own life experience quite closely matched the happy clappy, don't see it, it doesn't matter teachings of the time.

I suppose to save the angry comments I sould point out that skin colour blindness that didn't mean we didn't explore the differences. Quite the opposite in fact. We were just taught that it was like hair colour, eye colour, different accents and languages. All part of the great smorgasboard of humanity.

Fuck! That makes me sounds like some prudish paragon of lost virtue!

Just because people don't agree with you doesn't mean they don't understand you op. (are you my ex? 🤔)

@Itisbetter

Why are white families further up the list than non white?

Presumably it's first come first served?

Ballet is a specific issue as there have long been race issues, with black dancers being told their body shape isn’t right for ballet. Therefore a school specifically supporting black dancers has a very valid place and parents of black children are right to be concerned that another ballet school would not be a good fit for their child.

I agree with you op that white children should not be taking up these places.

I really don’t know.

My background is that I am from a deprived part of London and still live in that borough about 10 minutes from where I grew up. In classic London style I am no longer deprived, quite well off, but live minutes from some of the poorest in the city.

The majority of people in the borough are not white, that is true and some of the most deprived are white, also true. I don’t know though if the experience you have as someone who is not BAME can be equated to the BAME experience even if you live in an area that is majority BAME.

Partly because you know that it’s still a predominately white country, I mean the term BAME says it all, if you go just one borough over, that dynamic complete changes. If you are a child and and are as you said deprived but white at the moment you probably feel you can’t go on to do XYZ in your life because of your poor background. If you are in the same scenario but BAME you feel the same but that another obstacle is being BAME. I doubt, but don’t claim to know, that the experience is the same.

‘We’ can only seen each individual when society sees that. We don’t live in an individualistic society, it tends to be for the majority.

Sorry @SheepandCow, meant to reply to your post but obviously didn’t work. My last post is for you.

I totally see the issue but to be honest I think that the ballet school needs to say places are prioritised for BAME students (self identified) or a proportion of places.
I've no experience of dance schools at all so if i had a daughter and that was my nearest ballet place i'd probably think - great mission, sounds excellent, and put her name down. I know that's unthinking and ignorant but it's the truth - if the school said, ok but we prioritise BAME applicants i'd be totally supportive and either wait or go elsewhere.

Ballet school's mission is to celebrate Black ballet dancers But not to ONLY teach them!

I think we do undertsand that. Really we do.

Why are white families further up the list than non white? OP did not say they were for any reason other than, presumably, the date they joined the list. OP is objecting to them being on the list in the first place. That is what many are trying to understand, given the school is not BAME exclusively, which it could be if it wanted to be, legally!

Your post reads that white people shouldn’t send their kids to a predominantly bame ballet school because bame should have first dibs. I may have misunderstood what you meant, but it read that way to me. Doesn’t sound very diverse to me!!

Ah ok I get what you mean now OP (I answered earlier in the thread) tbh I don’t think it’s a problem for parents - they will just send their kid to wherever is best or closest. People unaffected by race issues are not likely to think about this in the day to day. If a ballet school wants to promote BAME dancers, then they should have a 75% or whatever quota for BAME students. I think it’s hard to make all parents think the way you want them to tbh