Nyt: Admitted, But Left Out

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/nyregion/for-minority-students-at-elite-new-york-private-schools-admittance-doesnt-bring-acceptance.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&smid=fb-share

 

 

 

WHEN Ayinde Alleyne arrived at the Trinity School, an elite independent school on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, he was eager to make new friends. A brainy 14-year-old, he was the son of immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago, a teacher and an auto-body repairman, in the South Bronx. He was soon overwhelmed by the privilege he saw. Talk of fancy vacations and weekends in the Hamptons rankled — “I couldn’t handle that at that stage of my life,” said Mr. Alleyne, now a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania — and he eventually found comfort in the school’s “minority corner,” where other minority students, of lesser means, hung out.

 

In 2011, when Mr. Alleyne was preparing to graduate, seniors were buzzing about the $1,300-per-student class trip to the Bahamas.

 

He recalls feeling stunned when some of his classmates, with whom he had spent the last four years at the school, asked him if he planned to go along.

 

“How do I get you to understand that going to the Bahamas is unimaginable for my family?” he said in a recent interview. “My family has never taken a vacation.”

It was a moment of disconnection, a common theme in conversations with minority students who have attended the city’s top-drawer private schools.

 

 

[pjfootballer]

Did they badger him about it or simply ask? I read the first page of the article, but I'm not sure context was used to know whether or not he was badgered. But good article. I have a great nephew who is 2 and a half and he is half black and half white. Maybe by the time he's grown, a lot of this will be gone and he won't have to worry about things like that.

[Riggo-toni]

I have a great nephew who is 2 and a half and he is half black and half white. Maybe by the time he's grown, a lot of this will be gone and he won't have to worry about things like that.

I don't think the outsider status these kids feel is based on race, but rather socio-economic status. Racism is thankfully fading out in our society, but I don't think any society ever does away with upper-class elitism. These trust fund babies simply can't comprehend let alone appreciate the sacrifices the other kids' parents are making for them.

[Mad Mike]

I don't think the outsider status these kids feel is based on race, but rather socio-economic status. Racism is thankfully fading out in our society, but I don't think any society ever does away with upper-class elitism. These trust fund babies simply can't comprehend let alone appreciate the sacrifices the other kids' parents are making for them.

 

First of all let me say I agree with your main point. How could I not. I'm a poor white man and I've lived it. Even today as an adult, I have very good friends who are economically much better off than me and I've had to turn down several group trips to vegas ( a luxury I cant even imagine right now) and on a few occasions in the past had to remind someone that I cant afford to do the things they can. The sad thing is, it's not the trip or event I feel I'm missing out on, it's the bonding time with people I care about.

 

However.... Racism may be "fading out" slowly in the long term but I think it's hard to deny that it has been on the rise over the past several years fueled in part by groups like the tea party who turn a blind eye to it in return for support for their cause. And as more of these piles of human excrement speak out, more have piled on.

[pjfootballer]

I don't think the outsider status these kids feel is based on race, but rather socio-economic status. Racism is thankfully fading out in our society, but I don't think any society ever does away with upper-class elitism. These trust fund babies simply can't comprehend let alone appreciate the sacrifices the other kids' parents are making for them.

Yeah, I see what you are saying.  I suspect going to an Ivy League school, you'd have to expect that.  But there are other students that are not minorities going to Penn that aren't rich.  Hell, most college students are poor for the most part.  My parents were middle class and my mom babysat 6-8 kids a day to pay for college tuition back in the 80s.  We weren't rich either and the only way I had money was in my Junior year when I left the dorms, moved into an apt. and got a part time job.   

[DCSaints_fan]

Did they badger him about it or simply ask? I read the first page of the article, but I'm not sure context was used to know whether or not he was badgered. But good article. I have a great nephew who is 2 and a half and he is half black and half white. Maybe by the time he's grown, a lot of this will be gone and he won't have to worry about things like that.

 

Yeah by the mere fact they were asking him about going, they weren't meaning to exclude him ... this is sort of an awkward situation and I remember the exact same issue in HS .. coming from a solidly middle class family and growing up in Fairfax County high schools.   But I remember the issue not being just wealth ... there are cultural issues and I remember getting along fine with kids who had fairly well off parents, but their parents raised them pretty well and they weren't snobish about it at all... then there were the buttheads ...

[skinsmarydu]

I grew up in very rural NoVa.  There was a very diverse mix of economic class, from the wealthy kids whose dads were execs in DC, to the dads who worked farms all day & moms that had to make their clothes.

There was one family of kids that rode our school bus, and they were extremely poor.  Not a single day goes by without me thinking about them & hoping one or more of them won a lottery...a BIG one.   

(And I also thank God that this was in the 80s, because they probably wouldn't have survived the horror of internet bullying.)

[Vilandil Tasardur]

I dated a girl in high school and through chunks of college that was the product of awful money management. Her father made over 100K and her mother over 60K, but they had five children and even the youngest always had the latest and greatest cell phone, the high speed fios, lived in a house well above their means, couldn't pay for their pets', and stuff like that.

 

This was in Southern Howard County though, and it didn't take too far going north to find really, really wealthy kids whose parents knew how to handle their ****. I'll never forget when my ex's sister came to us and told us that she had been invited to a birthday party on the girls's boat. She was so internally confused. She'd never been to the beach, let alone on a boat. And she couldn't comprehend how that level of lifestyle was even remotely possible. 

 

A lot of **** happened and that ex was crazy, but I pray every day for the two youngest. They were good kids being twisted by a level of needless poverty. It's one thing to be poor because you're poor. It's another to be poor because you blow your **** all over. 

[balki1867]

When I went to business school I felt a tinge of what happened in the article.  I grew up pretty much well-to-do in Montgomery County, but my dad grew up really poor and is an immigrant so we always lived somewhat middle class.  

 

I'd say 5-10% of my business school classmates grew up very wealthy (by that I mean their parents were executives at companies you've heard of) and their lifestyles astonished me.  Some of the women had successful careers before business school but were really just there to meet husbands that were appropriate for them.  And in general, there were expensive trips all about (e.g. weekends in Germany for Oktoberfest, etc) that were normal for them.

 

In my late 20s I was ok with that fact that we had different backgrounds (and honestly, I still felt like I didn't fit in sometimes), but I can't imagine going through that through your high school years, with a MUCH wider gap.

[pjfootballer]

One thing about going to HS and college is, I never sold out to peer pressure. I never gave a crap what some stupid clique thought of me or what I could or couldn't do. I am who I am, take it or leave it. Don't like me? See ya! I'll find another friend. I still don't give a crap about status or what people think if me. My Mother in law on the other hand is big into status and presentation. She always tries to be someone she isn't.

[Predicto]

This is a big problem at all small elite private high schools.  Trinity is perhaps the most snooty school in the USA, but the problems discussed in that article exist at every independent school to some degree.   My daughters go to one of those schools, and quite a few of the kids there come from wealth that we can barely comprehend.  Their school goes out of its way to be inclusive but it is impossible for that wealth not to create some stratification.