Two schools in one! (not in a good way)

My son’s school draws largely from three areas:  neighborhoods in my own town, mostly upper-middle-class, mostly native-born white with a smattering of Asians (Korean, Filipino, Indian); neighborhoods in the adjacent suburb, a Levittown-type area of small postwar ranch houses, with, by and large, a mix of native-born and Eastern European-immigrant whites.  And a cluster of apartment complexes, which, when we first arrived in the area nearly 20 years ago, had recently transformed into nearly completely Mexican-immigrant, with a police substation and Mariachi music playing whenever we would walk through there on our way from our first apartment to the Baskin Robbins.  

The school itself is reflective of this ethnic mix.  At the open house night, there were a number of Mexican families with small children in tow (presumably there was no babysitter).  At the parent information night for incoming freshmen, the principals’ speeches were translated into Spanish.  All the mailings that come to our house are bi-lingual.

The music department concert that we attended over the weekend?  Not so much.

Sure, it’s not a big surprise that the orchestra would be fairly “non-diverse,” as they say (though with a good number of Polish and a few Asian names).  You have to start your violin lessons young.  Band-instrument lessons you can take at school, though, so I would have expected a bit more diversity.  And choir?  Well, you have to meet the fine arts requirement somehow, and, besides, these were after-school groups as well as the classes, so you’d think this would be more diverse.  But nope.  Well, there were a few Spanish names, and a few ambiguously Spanish or Filipino, but very few.

No comment here.  Sure, my pro-open-immigration troll will tell me that even discussing this is racist, but that’s how it is.