Erika Nunn

In response to...

"Shelly is half-black and she looks it. She is gorgeous and I think when
parents act like their kids shouldn't notice, it sends a message to their
kids and to Shelly that something is wrong with her
being in our family."

This reminds me of when I was in college at The Evergreen State College
(btw, it is a great liberal arts school with no grades. Today I realize it
is pretty much an unschooling college. It has programs where you can
develop independent contracts to set up your own project and grade yourself
- I set up an independent contract to go to Thailand for six months to study
Thai language, teach ESL, and study women's roles in Buddhism)...oops, went
off on a tangent there...anyway, there was a girl who wrote into the school
newspaper. What I remember is that she explained how people would try to
describe her out of a crowd of white people. They would say the "girl with
the long black hair," or anything else that wouldn't actually point out her
heritage. She was Asian (I can't remember from where exactly), but she
couldn't understand why people wouldn't just describe her as being Asian.
She explained that she was proud of her heritage and knew that people were
trying to be PC by not singling her out, but she also knew that it was
rather false as it would be the most obvious to describe her as being Asian.

I have also traveled a lot, to places like Jamaica and Thailand where I
stuck out like a sore thumb. All the people there always called me the
"white girl" or "falang" (which means fat, white guava in Thai - that is
what they call all white people - heh). There wasn't this hush-hush about
the fact that I was different. In a way I felt like they were saying, "we
know you are different, but that's okay." It just felt more straightforward
and real. Obviously we have different race issues here, but it's just
something to think about.

I'm not really sure if that was about unschooling, but the college part is!
If any of you are looking for a great college for your kids, I would check
it out. Located in Olympia, Washington. :)

Erika :)

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Elizabeth Hill

** - I set up an independent contract to go to Thailand for six months
to study
Thai language, teach ESL, and study women's roles in Buddhism)...oops, went
off on a tangent there.**

Sometimes the tangents are even more interesting than the linear parts
of the posts. Yours was especially cool. Taking juicy bites out of
life is what unschooling is all about, no?

Betsy