thoughts on race from a white girl in a black school

Beth — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 05:32:39 +0000

I’m Beth. I grew up in a quiet, white, upper middle class suburb of Milwaukee. By all racial and socioeconomic predictors, I should be more than halfway through college by now, on my way to a nice condo in a clean city and earnings upwards of $70,000 or so a year. A semester into college, the feeling of getting ‘tracked’ into a life and career seemed really suffocating and I took a year off and moved to Hyde Park, a tight knit but racial-tension-ridden neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago.

Financial trouble–I now support myself–prevented me from attending the University of Chicago as I had planned in Fall 2009. The University of Illinois wanted me to have taken a college-level math and science class before I enrolled, so I registered at Kennedy King College, the City College of Chicago nearest my home.

Kennedy King is located in Englewood, a poor, black, crime-ridden neighborhood about two miles southeast of Hyde Park. The school is open registration and serves a lot of students with jobs, elder or child care obligations, or a GED or other gap in education. Almost every student and many–I think the majority– of instructors and staff members are black. I have red hair. I turn some heads. This blog will reflect my thoughts on race relations and chronicle my reflections on being in a racial minority for the first time.

A Redhead in Englewood

thoughts on race from a white girl in a black school