What I Learned from Russell's Preschool

Russell's teachers from Starlite Preschool paid us a visit today, and Russell was overjoyed to see them. There are two points I'd like to make about Russell's preschool experience, besides the fact that Teacher Qing and Teacher Liu are wonderful in working with children and with Russell in particular.

First, as we are a one-income family (Jenny has stayed at home with the kids for 2 years now), there was no way we could afford sending Russell to preschool without the tax cut we received back in 2002. I would like to thank President Bush and the Congress for giving me back some of my hard-earned dollars to use on the education of my children. Anyone who tells me that the Bush tax cuts only benefited the rich should get a clue, or donate their tax cut each year to charity.

Second, even though the Starlite Preschool is reasonably priced and its bilingual staff is excellent with children, there are only a handful of white students out of hundreds of children enrolled at the school. The school is located on the border of Chinatown and the Lake Merritt/Grand Lake districts of Oakland (Kerry by 51%), so it is also fairly convenient to people of all races. In fact, the school is quite popular with black and Hispanic kids, who make up nearly 20% of the school's students. There's even a waiting list for families who want their children to attend the school.

It was at Russell's Starlite Christmas concert last year, when I made the observation that the few white parents with children enrolled at the school were either married to someone Chinese, or spoke Serbo-Croatian. If you don't believe me, then look at the photographs of the students here. Then, I wondered aloud why the white liberals living in Oakland avoided us minorities like the plague even through they would preach diversity and all that Kumbaya-stuff at the drop of a hat.

This led to my study of white-flight in the Bay Area suburbs, which I documented in this recent piece ("The New Separate But Equal") at the American Thinker, but only after the Wall Street Journal beat me to the punch. The main difference between my article and the WSJ's is that I saw that the "New White Flight" was taking place only in blue-states, where diversity-loving liberals supposedly had created a color-blind utopia.

It turns out that the liberals' diversity schtick was all a hoax, and they were just as paranoid of living and having their children go to school with people of color as the Klu Klux Klan. The only difference was that once a year, on Election Day, the white liberals would come to our neighborhoods (without wearing white hoods) and tell us who to vote for. Otherwise, except for their tattoos, the liberals and the KKK were about the same.


Russell was happy to see Teacher Liu (left) and Teacher Qing from the Starlite Preschool


Russell plants a kiss on Teacher Qing, from his preschool days


Teacher Liu can't wait to get her hands on Punky next year at the Starlite Preschool in Oakland