"I once lived in a Black mecca. But by the summer of 2022, my toddler son and I were often the only Black folks on the playground in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a fact that felt both alienating and surreal. We moved to Bed-Stuy that summer to be close to my sister and her family. Reeling from a recent separation and scrambling for child care in a different neighborhood, I often found myself on the playground, trying to make sense of both our new life and this"
"One sweltering day, my son was riding his scooter on the playground when a white nanny came by with her charge, a mixed-race girl who was roughly the same age as him. After hearing my son speak hesitantly to the little girl she was minding, the nanny said that my child, then nearly 3 years old, would make a good athlete but might struggle with academics."
A move to Bedford-Stuyvesant in summer 2022 placed a newly single parent and toddler in a neighborhood that had noticeably changed. The parent often found themselves and their child as the only Black people on playgrounds, which produced feelings of alienation. The child commonly played with white and mixed-race peers, and encounters with non-Black caregivers sometimes included stereotypical judgments about the child’s future abilities. A nanny predicted athletic success but academic struggle for the nearly three-year-old, an assessment that felt offensive. The neighborhood’s familiar Black community presence and elder interactions had become increasingly rare.
Read at Curbed
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