Where Are the White Families?
Why We Are A Co-op for People of the Global Majority
When I started Empower Oceanside in the late summer of 2021, I was desperately looking to connect with other unschooling families. As a mixed-race mother that presents as brown, I was especially looking for relationships with unschooling families of color. I had learned about unschooling through the “Fare of the Free Child” podcast by Black unschooling mama and overall badass, Akilah S. Richards. It was through one of her episodes that I learned about Chemay Morales-James and her virtual co-op My Reflection Matters. I eagerly joined and met many amazing Black and brown unschoolers throughout the world. With the knowledge that, indeed, there were other people like me in the unschooling world, I went ahead and created my own co-op in Oceanside.
As my Instagram posts about starting the co-op spread, there was a steady stream of interest in joining. After the first few gatherings I learned that most unschooling families in the SoCal area are white, likely due to layers of systemic privilege like financial security, time, and access to information. While this was not the diverse group of families I had hoped for, I was motivated to keep going because of my desire to find a community of unschoolers, even if the majority of them were white.
And for the first year, this concession worked well. We had regular gatherings - park days, field trips, camping trips - and it felt like we were really building a community. I didn’t want the co-op to grow too big too quickly so we closed registration for a couple of seaons as we got to know one another. I was also pregnant at the time and having the new co-op friends was a lifeline of support, especially for my oldest who had more energy than I could physically handle. It seemed everyone was in a comfortable place with one another and that we had trusting and respectful relationships.
At one of our regular meetings we discussed opening the co-op registration again for new families to join us. I suggested that this period of registration be specifically for families and caregivers of the global majority, meaning non-white folks, because, while there were several of us families of color in the co-op, I had always envisioned that we would be more. As a group, we decided that all the white families already in the co-op would continue on with us but we wouldn’t be accepting anymore new white families in order to make the space more inviting to non-white families. Everyone agreed this would be a good boundary for opening registration, and so we did.
Fast forward to a year later, and of the seven white families that we started with, we are down to one. I honestly don’t believe that their leaving had anything to do with us prioritizing registration to families of color, but I don’t know why they stopped showing up because most of them did not let us know they were even leaving in the first place. A few communicated that the co-op wasn’t for them for different reasons and they chose to leave. A couple of them I still consider friends.
Their leaving didn’t have the same impact on us like the other ones that left without saying goodbye. When those families left, there was a deep sense of loss for me and my oldest. We had spent a year together at park days, field trips, and camping. A year is not much to those of us adults, but for young children a year makes up a significant chunk of their lives.
I’ve tried to fill in the gaps of why they left and any scenario I come up with doesn’t lessen the hurt of their unexpected departure. Were they feeling uncomfortable being the white people in a co-op trying to center non-white culture? Did they want more planned activites? Were we straying too far from the nature of “unschooling” in order to make space for more families of the global majority? Did something happen between the kids or adults? Since they stopped showing up, I’m left with all these questions and hypothetical situations.
I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that my oldest and I experienced harm from these families when they left. We had grown attached to them and their leaving felt like a break-up. And the worst kind of break-up at that, the kind where you’re ghosted and have no understanding of what caused the rupture. It’s been two years since we’ve seen any of them and my oldest still asks me, “what happened to so and so?” or “remember so and so?”.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence that all the families that left the co-op are white. But maybe it’s also part of white supremacy culture - the fear of causing conflict and the avoidance of potentially difficult conversations that stem from that fear because of the expectation of comfort. White supremacy culture affects everyone, not just white people, so I want to make it clear that I am not saying that the families that left are white supremacists. Rather, they being higher on the spectrum of whiteness than those of us who stayed are perhaps more easily susceptible to the characteristics of white supremacy culture that make it possible for them to leave a community without addressing why they are leaving.
However, this is all speculation. Whatever the reason for the “white flight” from our co-op, we continue trying to build a community of radical parenting, but now within the parameters of being (mostly) caregivers of color.
