"Hi, my name is Michelle, I live in Wantagh, New York but I am originally from Freeport, New York. I moved from Freeport when I was heading into my freshman year of high school. Wantagh and the nearby areas around here are predominantly white, and have very large white populations among their high schools.
I am Colombian, but was born here in America. My dad, who was born in Colombia has a very pale skin tone, but my mom who was also born there, is a lot darker than him. I came out with my dad's skin tone and bright hazel eyes from my maternal great grandmother, so some might say that I do resemble someone who is white because of the features I just mentioned. Other people disagree and guess my Colombian heritage right when I meet them, so I have always been kind of in the middle of "looking white" and "looking hispanic." Whether I was aware of it or not, I feel like I have definitely been in situations where my physical resemblance to someone who was white has gotten me certain advantages and privileges throughout my life that others who do not look like me did not.
Coming to MacArthur High School was definitely a big shift in my life. I had only ever known the Hispanic and Black demographic that existed in Freeport. Almost 90 percent of the people I was friends with in Freeport were Dominican, Salvadorian, or Black. And I could count on my fingers how many white students I saw at my middle school. The drastic difference came when the same number of white people I saw at my middle school in Freeport was the number of Black people I saw at MacArthur. I naturally gravitated towards a group of minorities in my grade, made up of friends who were Filipino, Korean, Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Colombian like me. It was a very small group amongst the big white population in the high school, which got to be overwhelming for me. I did not feel comfortable with the lack of diversity I saw, and chose to stick with the diversity I was used to, because I just felt more comfortable and felt like I had people to relate to me more, even if the group was small.
I cannot say that my appearance got me to assimilate or be more accepted into the main popular groups which were mostly white people, because even if it did, I had no desire to. I heard many things about predominantly white high schools, and never imagined myself actually going to one. And honestly, I am glad I chose the friend group that I did. These are friends that I still hang out with and bond with to this day, and I never slipped up into wanting "cooler" or a "more popular" friend group. The racial disparities at MacArthur and many of the schools in the area go hand in hand with these social constructs of popularity, exclusion and separation that have been created by predominantly white neighborhoods
As satisfied as I was with the group of friends I had, I hated seeing the cliques all throughout my school. The amount of consolidated groups amongst the popular white kids that I saw was so silly to me, and it was something that Freeport never really dealt with. There might have been friend groups at Freeport, but for an event like spirit week, where everyone at Freeport is all together listening to music and dancing together in the cafeteria, MacArthur students would not even think to do something like that, it is not appealing to them. It would mean stepping out of these group boundaries, and veering from the status quo.
There were times where I did miss Freeport because of the major division at MacArthur based on race and popularity and economic status. I would watch my old friends' stories and miss how unified people were. Because people from certain urban areas of Freeport know that stuff like that does not matter. Because everyone lives in the same town, everyone came from the same schools, and no one is better than anyone else. People from Freeport know what it is like to live with less resources than these upper class white neighborhoods , and still somehow manage to make the best out of it. I feel like even if the people that I was friends with at MacArthur followed those same ideologies, a majority of the rest of the people at Macarthur did not. Having more money, having rich parents, and being white was what seemed to matter more than anything to the popular white kids groups.
The popular kids did not care enough to assimilate with others, invite people of lower popularity, like my friend group, to their houses and boat parties, or even talk to them. You were very lucky if you were close to multiple people of different levels of popularity at the high school, because for the most part, everyone was comfortable in their own designated groups. Almost reminds me of that scene in Mean Girls where Janice is telling Cady about all of the cliques at their school, because that is literally what Macarthur was. And do not get me wrong, I have been a social butterfly all my life, and I stayed true to that my 4 years attending a predominantly white high school. I did not care if a popular white kid looked at me funny, or was talking about me behind my back, which happened multiple times. I knew the type of person I was before entering the doors of that high school, the neighborhood I was raised in and the values it taught me. When I interacted with anyone at that school, I chose to look past economic status, skin color, how many followers they had on Instagram. Because in the end it reflects on me, and the type of person I was. I did not want to leave that high school as a girl who was "cliquey" and believed in social hierarchy. As surrounded as I was by it, I surrounded myself with the right people to stay true to who I was, the values I held and the impact I wanted to leave on other people.
Changing schools was a complete 360 in my life. It was something I only thought I would see in the movies. But I am grateful for the experience, the growth and the lessons taught while I was going there. I grew bonds closer than ever before, and got to know people of a wide range of cultures, heritages and much more. It was a time in my life where I really got to see a taste of what the outside world is like and the social imbalances that are still persisting in America today, and prepared me to become the type of person I want to be in the future, and how I would like to carry myself, despite what others around me are doing or telling me to do."
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