I am standing on the balcony of a suite overlooking a well-paraded street corner in the Faubourg-Marigny, an historic neighborhood abutting the French Quarter. Mardi Gras is early this year, February 5th, but the sun is out, the sky a festive blue and temperatures are in the 70's. In my sparkling red flapper dress and striped red and blond wig, I finger beads, sip a mimosa and smile down at the teeming mass of costumed humanity below, much of it only partially clad. It is Mardi Gras day, I am at a party and I am in a good mood. My husband is stretched out on a deck chair behind me, enjoying the sun and the spectacle, my son is inside consorting with a gaggle of other children, and, for a startling moment, I feel something akin to carefree. Then I sidle up to a friend of mine in a superhero costume, who is seated Indian-style before the railing, her shirt scrunched up around her shoulders as she breastfeeds her two-year-old daughter and initiate the one topic of conversation that triggers anxiety in nearly every gathering of parents in New Orleans and which is guaranteed to dampen my mood: New Orleans city schools. This particular friend happens to be an administrator at an International school for French and Spanish language immersion, and what I want is her opinion on the partial-French immersion program at the Charter school where my son, Dylan, currently attends Pre-K.

"Well," my friend observes, "two students from there who have recently transferred to the International School are struggling…they say that full-immersion is really the way to go. All the research supports it." "On the other hand," she adds, as she transfers her daughter from right to left breast, "that could reflect the individual students, not the school. I mean, I LOVE the French kindergarten teacher at Dylan's school." "Yes," I nod, enthusiastically, " that's who Dylan would have next year if we put him in the French track." "She's great." Laura confirms, "but, you know, one of the things I like about the International School is that it's not just black and white…there's also the Hispanic contingent." I nod again, slightly crestfallen. "Yeah, and Dylan's school seems to be majority black in the older grades," I note. My friend smiles, sagely. "That's because everyone [white] leaves…honestly, you will leave eventually, too." I sip my drink pensively. "But it's a really good school with a really great administration," I protest. "It's a terrific school," my friend agrees, "I'm just saying that he may, eventually, feel out of place." "But the kids there…well, they're nice kids," I point out. She responds with a resigned shrug. "Honestly, what I love about the International School is that it has this great community of artsy and eccentric parents like Charles and me—all families from the Marigny! Dylan's school is a little too suburban for us…we really have nothing in common with those people." I consider this. And consider, too, the aspects of myself which my friend might consider "too suburban," such as that aspect which motivated me to retreat from the Marigny after my son was born to the more "suburban" yet still historic environs of our neighborhood community across the river. Or that aspect of me which, in the unlikely event that I had breastfed Dylan at the age of two, would have propelled me to seek the privacy and refuge of a bedroom or bathroom, despite the spectrum of bare breasts, real and artificial, on display in the bright afternoon sun of Mardi Gras day.

As I've written before in this column, New Orleans schools are sharply divided along racial and economic lines. Only one public primary school, another Charter school, is majority white. Most white middle class parents fight hard to get their children into this school. Very few will admit openly that race is a factor. We focus, instead on the poor resources, ill-prepared staff, shoddy facilities or corrupt administration of the public school system (all valid issues). When I confess to liberal friends my ambivalence about the fact that if Dylan stays where he is he may end up in classes that are at least 70 or 75% black or when I go further to question, aloud, whether this ambivalence is really rational—in other words, whether, given all of the positive aspects of Dylan's current school, I should be worried at all—I am met, the majority of the time, with sympathy and silence. My hunch is that most people share my discomfort but are unwilling to explore it. They are unwilling to ask why it is that when we walk into a room that is all black, we feel discomfort. We like a smattering of color, do we not? Especially when it comes to the education of our children. Too much darkness is, well, too much. But who will say, let alone examine this? These aren't, after all, acceptable sentiments in a good liberal, dedicated, in theory, to a sesame street world.

When I first came to New Orleans I taught for an historically black college. Initially, as I traveled through my daily routine on campus, I felt very much out of place. I had never been a minority and suddenly felt extraordinarily "white." Indeed, I had never really felt so "white" in my life. Yet, while I never entirely shook this awareness of my skin color, during my time there, my initial self-consciousness definitely faded. After a semester or two, I was able to interact with my colleagues and students more or less as I would interact with anyone, and to move through spaces populated by people who were different from me as though it were natural. This is not to say that I ever felt an easy sense of belonging or identity. I simply no longer felt like a stranger.

Dylan's gifted Pre-Kindergarten class, in which he has enjoyed a daily French class, and weekly art and computer classes, and excellent teachers, is exactly 50% white and 50% black. This demographic composition seems to work well. The children work together productively and race is not an issue. Yet, even on the days when we pick Dylan up late from the school's aftercare which is typically 90% black, Dylan, along with everyone else in the room, seems oblivious to or unaffected by this discrepancy. It is his "normal." On the few occasions that he has mentioned skin color, in order to describe a classmate or friend to me, he says "light" or "dark skinned," rather than black or white. I have no doubt that this will change as soon as Dylan becomes more socially aware, particularly given the tensions and conflicts caused by poverty, crime, and racism in this city. For now, however, his innocence reminds me, as did my job at a black university that we truly aren't born into the world with a perception of otherness. Rather, it is schooled into us and can, perhaps, be tempered or to a small degree un-learned by those experiences which take us beyond the routine.

On a rainy Friday in Lent, Chris, Dylan and I drive in the early evening to Dylan's school for the PTO's annual fish fry. As Chris and I stand in line for our meals, chatting with other parents and teachers, Dylan races about the room with four of his "peeps." Dylan's future French teacher stops to greet us, as do his two current teachers and the head of the PTO. Later, seated at a table, as we munch hungrily on fried fish, green beans and potato salad, Chris and I gaze about the room. The families assembled in small groups or standing in line are both black and white, and everyone appears, at least in this moment, to interact with ease, relaxed and happy. It is a simple gathering, really, and yet feels unique. "This is nice," Chris comments, waving his fork. "You wouldn't see this at other schools." I nod, and reflect to myself, that, yes, this is nice.