Black and White

There are three elementary schools opening in the newly formed Algiers Charter School Association.

Xy attended a mass meeting the other day and observed that one elementary school has a white principal and one has a black principal. All the faculty at the former school are white. All the faculty at the latter school are black.

As for the third school, where Xy will be teaching: The principal is a Creole — a woman of mixed race. And at this school the faculty is roughly half black and half white.

I feel, like George Costanza, that I “shouldn’t be talking about this.” But it strikes me as both funny and sad, disappointing and inevitable.

Xy has also observed that, at her school with the mixed faculty, the teachers tend to hang with their own racial groups. The black teachers sit with the other black teachers; the white teachers sit with the other white teachers. They’re not racists. People are just most comfortable around people who are “like them.”

Nevertheless, Xy has made a point of sitting with the black teachers. It’s a small attempt to promote interracial solidarity.