Page 135 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

128 In search of a ‘good mix’
she was saying that smaller schools might have more potential to become
‘unbalanced’ in their representation of the community. But it was also pos-
sible that she was expressing more a sense of ‘where have they all come
from?’. If this is the case, it would seem to spring from an invisibilisation of
the black communities who lived in the borough, but not in her particular,
closely circumscribed area. She was either unaware of their existence – or
thought that they somehow constituted a different ‘community’.
At first, it was not entirely clear what Deborah was afraid of in the ‘mix’
she saw at the school. Later in that interview, she was a bit more specific:
‘It’s terribly important, you know, at this age, and I think really because
of the socialising aspect, to me. That’s why I think it’s important that he
goes somewhere that has a good mix of children’. Deborah did not explain
exactly the nature of this socialising aspect that meant that the racial make-
up of her child’s school was important, and I did not specifically press her
on this point. However, there was clearly an underlying fear of racialised
social behaviour that she was alluding to. Children who were non-white,
and perhaps poor, were clearly an ‘other’ that she would like her son to be
able to cope with but not to be totally influenced by. If he were to go to a
school where there was, according to Deborah, only 5 per cent white pupils,
he would not learn how to be white and middle class in the right way. This
learning process was less important at pre-nursery level, so Deborah was
happy to send her son for a limited period to a local playgroup where ‘all
that reflected was background because people couldn’t afford to send their
children to private nurseries’. However, ‘I just don’t think it works when
they get older and start going to primary school’. Thus, the context of educa-
tion itself was highly racialised. Deborah’s son must learn social rules in the
right racial and class context. In mixing (like miscegenation), there is a risk
that something is lost.
Teresa had similar worries to Deborah and, by the time of the second
interview, she was beginning to prepare to move out of Clapham if her son
was not accepted into the school of her choice. She compared the situation
in Clapham less favourably with other areas in London that had reputations
for being more liberal middle class: ‘I don’t know if left of centre is the right
word? I think there’s a lot more going to the state schools’ (Interview 18).
Teresa was more explicit than Deborah in describing the ‘mix’ that she was
looking for. After saying that she was interested in a ‘happy’ atmosphere,
the following extract explores what she said she looked for when visiting
prospective schools:

Teresa: I’m keen on a good social mix, and ethnic mix. But I don’t, I
think I would feel ...I certainly 50 per cent representation of
a... white influence, I think. Do I mean white, or do I mean
Christian? I don’t know. You see, I went to see a school yesterday,
and I really liked it, and they have about 15 different languages
there. And I really liked it. But I would definitely want to feel