Greater Boston is still quite segregated, thanks in large part to redlining policies of the recent past. For anyone who didn’t already know this, and if you want to see for yourself, take a round trip ride on the Red Line from Alewife to Ashmont and then on the Mattapan High Speed Line to it’s end. The average racial makeup of the passengers drastically changes at Downtown Crossing and Park Street. You might also recognize that the Mattapan High Speed Line trolleys are the same as an “historic” trolley on display at Boylston Station on the Green Line.

Boston is still far more diverse on average than the small town in New Hampshire where we lived when our kids were born. Most of the time in NH, wherever we went my family was the least “white” which made us the object of intrusive questions: Is your husband Asian? No. Are your children adopted? No. Are you the nanny? No. I started dyeing my hair darker just make it easier for strangers to see that my kids do have some of my features and would leave me alone.

Arriving to the diversity of Greater Boston was a breath of fresh air. Our family has a number of non-typical identifiers and we felt so much more comfortable here. I was disheartened to discover that the local homeschooling community (that I could find at that time**) did not have the diversity of the larger community. Arriving at our first homeschooling event, after coming out of public school, I felt so much like I did the day I took my young kids on a day of exploring the T and saw the segregation for the first time, I had no idea.

I have no suggestions or solutions for this social and economic dynamic. It’s important to know about, however. Maybe this post will help someone new to homeschooling understand a tiny bit more about Greater Boston’s homeschooling community. Maybe I’m trying to explore how homeschooling has been an unexpected journey of self-discovery in trying to figure out who my family is and what our relationships are with people in the wider world.

** This year I discovered a group on Facebook dedicated to Boston Homeschool Families of Color. I’m so glad to know there is diversity in the homeschool community and I hope one day everyone can more easily come together.