Personal Journal #1: 2.24.09

I grew up in a wealthy suburb outside of Pittsburgh called Fox Chapel. I felt as if I did not fit in with the girls buying designer handbags and having cell phones at the age of fourteen, but I lived amongst them from the time I was nine until leaving for Nyack. The high school that I went to was primarily white, but the deficit of average incomes per family was extremely diverse! There were families making six figure incomes and family on welfare, all primarily white students, but with access to different privileges. The school district spanned a large area which is where the difference of incomes came into effect. One area was particularly “lower class” with the parents earning a lower average income than the parents of the other students from the school. These students all came from the same elementary school and many of these students were in the “merge” program at my school which was for the students who needed extra help. “Merge” was not a special ed group, but the classes were geared more towards keeping the students off the streets and enforcing disciplinary action than learning. The students in the “merge” program were not as expected to succeed as the rest of the students. There was a lot of tension between these students and the rest of the students in my school. Some people engaged in name-calling the students in the “merge” program as “the rats,” making a derogatory name for them because of where they lived. A year after I graduated there was a conflict between the groups when the “preps” decided to dress up as the “rats” for Halloween. This story go coverage from the local newspaper and the conflict continues.
There was a fairly large group of Indian students in my area, almost all of them living in the wealthiest homes in Fox Chapel and almost all of them enrolled in the advanced placement courses. Many of the parents of those students were successful doctors and lawyers. Another minority group was the non-practicing Jews. They were very proud of their “ethnic ties” to Judaism, but not per se of the religion itself. These students tend to be in the accelerated and advanced placement classes and come from wealthy families.