Lament of a Westchester Youth 

 

Lament of a Westchester Youth 

By Charlie Olver 

“Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” 

-Henry D. Thoreau excerpted from Walden, 1910

 

Constructivist Political Theory states: One’s identity is learned and confirmed by their social-interaction and their experiences. A professor knows they are a professor because their students confirm them to be so. In that school of thought, our identity is usually formed through reaction to not wanting to be something else. Colonists defined themselves as Americans in opposition to being British. But what if your identity is based solely on gilded interactions? What if your belief system was forged through superficial or desired projections? Who would you be then?

Olvers have always embodied globalization. I descend from Africans, Ashkenazi Jews, Chinese, Portuguese, and Russians, and am a citizen of America and Trinidad. If my Russian grandmother didn’t put me in time-out for not brushing my hair, my Chinese grandmother would for losing at mahjong. My parents would only scorn me in French and when I learned to spell, their private conversations turned into a pastiche of Spanish, French, and Italian. Multiculturalism is an Olver’s strongest value. 

My mother was born and raised in Guyana during the Burnham dictatorship. She’s always worked for NGOs and she has always made a point to advocate for the underprivileged. As a UN child, my father moved from one European city to another. As a Harvard man, my father’s career at the UN was solely dedicated to developing nations in crisis. When I was a child, he would leave for months at a time to consult in Syria, Iraq, and South Sudan; he was a pioneer, a guardian of the impoverished.

His father had created the Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People of UNDP, the first joint initiative of the Israeli Army and the PLO. My mother’s father was a financial backer of the newspaper that regained free speech in Guyana. I can still see the Olver family motto above the fireplace: ‘Ad Foedera Cresco,’ or ‘We Gain Through Treaties’. 

My siblings have all had, for the most part, philanthropic careers as well. My oldest sibling, Anna, sends evildoers to spend hard time in prison, as a prosecutor. Michael, as a middle eastern specialist, deals with complex multijurisdictional corporate investigations and due diligence all over the world but lives in Dubai. Sarah works on HIV prevention, through global health NGOs, in Malawi. Though when I was younger I did not see them often, I always looked up to them. As the youngest of five, and Anna being more than 25 years older than me, I watched them solve world crises before I could conquer walking. 

Growing up in Westchester, New York, only reiterated those liberal ideologies. As a Liberal Powerhouse, Westchester’s Progressive movements have always been strong. In my hometown Croton, almost all chain restaurants were banned, we no longer use plastic bags, and at the beginning of every school year, we had to state our preferred pronouns. I grew up going to assemblies on discrimination in elementary school and was force-fed videos from the civil rights movement on MLK day. Whether in TV shows like Madmen or Big Mouth, Westchester has been portrayed as an iconic liberal and wealthy suburbia for decades. From Hillary Clinton to Goldman Sachs Executives to Brad Pitt, Westchester has always been a safe suburban setting for the rich democrat to retreat to.

The real attraction for families to move to Westchester is the schools. It is easy to assume that the offspring of the rich and wealthy would all attend private schools, but most children in Westchester go to public schools. Westchester notably has the highest taxes in the nation, and the result is that most public schools in the county have more funding than most private schools across the nation. Westchester schools have been ranked in the top 200 schools across the nation for many years in a row, and in most schools, graduation rates are high. Going to grade school in Westchester gave me many opportunities, within my field of passions, that I would not have received otherwise. 

Truthfully, being a mutt always made me insecure because I never felt I belonged anywhere. With my mother’s Chinese-Portuguese-Guyanese family, I was the “white kid” with the American accent, and with my father’s Russian-Jewish and British relatives I felt out of place because I am fairly dark. My half-brother Josh has an African father, while my other half-siblings had the same white mother, so I never resembled anyone. Though I’m very close to my brother, people often ask if I was adopted. I came to believe identity was simply multicultural. Though, to understand my roots, I tried to learn what it meant to be Guyanese and Trinidadian, I will never be Trinidadian and never fully comprehend what living in Guyana is like. My background may always be of interest to others but has always alienated me. 

I was led to conclude that my family was comprised of a conglomerate of diplomatic heroes and heroines, but I later learned they were just people. 

I found out my parents were going to get a divorce when I was in second grade. I had always thought that I just never cared when Mom moved out, but I know now, we never really felt like a family to begin with. All of my siblings are half-siblings, and that four-letter word, half, adds quite a bit of separation. They are all between 8 and 25 years older than me, the oldest being only 10 years younger than my mother. . Anna, Michael, and Sarah are all full siblings to each other from my father’s second marriage, and he never really was a part of their lives. When I was born, they were already adults, and understandably, not enthused by the idea of me. Growing up, I always felt like I was a member of the club, got the t-shirt and all, but was never invited to the meetings. I realize now, I was lonely because my existence was emotionally difficult for many of my family members. Anna, Michael, and Sarah always attempted to be in my life on the surface level, but to no one’s fault, we could never form a genuine relationship. When my father became my sole caretaker after the divorce, more tensions arose because he was not able to be present in their childhoods, yet could be the only person present in mine. Similarly, Josh despised me for a long time because he was an only child until I came along. 

When you are seven, you can never really understand, but you can always feel. Doors locked, deafening silence, and dust piling in the unlived living room. When I was young, I had deep envy for my friends. Their families were so whole. Their siblings would pull pranks on them, and they had family photos from Lake George, and they spoke to each other. My brother would roll me up in carpets and lock me in closets, our photos were all of singular people, and we only ever had state dinners with folded napkins and diplomatic love. 

My family may be worldly, but all that means is I only get all my siblings in the same room once every five years. I assumed that we just “were” how proper families “were”. Why question the system? I always assumed my emptiness was self-inflicted and that my family members were all perfectly rational humanitarian actors. When I realized they weren’t, all of my feelings for the first time became validated. Age and maturity always chips the gild off the gilded. 

Similarly, Westchester is not the perfect icon it has been made out to be. Westchester, tThough majority liberal, the county is deeply segregated, both in wealth and race, causing discrepancies in education quality throughout the county. 

 In my graduating class of 126 people, only 5 were African American. The U.S Census Bureau declared that only 73% of the population in Westchester was white, but, knowing my town and others, I knew those demographics could not be homogenous across the county. When Westchester was forced to implement mandatory moderate-income housing, it decided to condense these projects into specific areas to ensure low crime rates. It was this legislation that made it possible for towns like Armonk to maintain an 89.9% white population, and yet thirty minutes away, have Peekskill, having a mere 33.1% caucasian population (Statistical Atlas). In towns like Ossining, Peekskill, and Mount Vernon, where these housing projects exist, the populations never break more than 45% caucasian allowing Westchester to meet the standards set by the state, but not have to actually have diversity (Statistical Atlas). Humanity is indeed tribal, and people of certain racial and cultural ties tend to form like communities, but this division in Westchester has lasting negative impacts on the people that live there. This forced implementation of moderate-income housing also explains why the median income in Armonk is $207 thousand a year, Peekskill drops to only $55 thousand a year (Statistical Atlas). Such significant correlations between race and wealth inequality is severe across Westchester county. This racial and wealth pooling set the precedent for education, town to town, to never be equal.  

This de facto segregation becomes evident when comparing the quality of schools in those lower-income pockets to others around the county. While Niche yearly reports annually that districts like Scarsdale, Chappaqua, and Armonk make the top 200 public schools in the nation, Ossining and Peekskill were not even break the top on the list of 500 (Niche). Schools within those racial pockets on average spend per student, ten thousand dollar less per student  than most other towns in Westchester (NYS Education Department ). That large of a difference in funding causes colossal inequalities in education. 

The quality of a student’s education impacts their wealth and status long term. Where the graduation rate at the high school in Chappaqua was 99.9% last year, Ossining High School only had a graduation rate of 72%, reinforcing this cyclical wealth discrepancy (Chappaqua UFSD; Ossining UFSD). Not only do these racial and wealth patterns affect the current children living in Westchester, it too, sets a precedent for their college careers, their overall opportunities, and most importantly, their livelihoods. 

When I was 16 I ran away from my family, but not as dramatically as one might assume. Having graduated high school, the last thing I wanted was to stay in my suffocatingly silent houses, so I did what I had always done: disappeared. I moved to Portugal and then Germany, working on farms, retreating into nature. Like a vacuum, school stress, budding drug addiction, and sexual abuse ceased to exist in my newly created fantasy oasis. I would talk to my family once every few months, and I believed I could just surgically remove that splotch from my Identity. 

Where I thought my gap year was my exit, living away from Olvers just gave me enough perspective to be able to address my family. Superficial or false identities cause people to never question their system and can lead some to suffer consequences they did not earn. It is then everyone’s job to always question and thus expose these shortcomings to improve their systems for all. By questioning my family’s true Identity and its genuine impact on myself, I had the opportunity to express my conflict and thus change my system to better fit its projected identity. I am an Olver, and though that fact cannot change, I can change what that means and receive closure on the pain I carried for it. 

In the same sense, Westchester’s Liberal identity does not, and should not, have to be hypocritical. The same way my issues with my identity did not simply define moments in my childhood, but set certain precedence for the rest of my life, addressing Westchester’s shortcomings is pertinent. 

Westchester’s false liberal identity only does harm to negatively impacts the ones alienated by it. Not only does the wealth and race discrepancy affect this population as they develop, it too, sets a precedent for these student’s college careers, their overall opportunities, and most importantly, their livelihoods. 

Morosely, it is obvious that this skewed infrastructural system was not an accident. In Croton, local politicians denied the building of low-income housing multiple times due to fear of increased crime. Many towns have denied building homeless shelters for similar reasoning. When confronted with the idea of busing students from predominantly white to black schools, and vice versa, to diversify schools in southern Westchester, parents from white neighborhoods became very vocal in opposition. Their argument being: if they are paying such high taxes, their children should not have to go to a lower quality school. Whether you attribute these differences in education to household wealth, race, or community values, the fact is: the Westchester fantasy is a reality for some and myth for others. Westchester’s identity cannot be allowed to shade itself from critique. The issue of education equality impacts the opportunities and identities of those alienated by our segregated infrastructure. It is immoral to brand oneself progressive, yet sentence certain groups to lives that are systematically limited.  

We all have agency. We all have the capacity to change: how we are an Olver, how we shape Westchester’s infrastructure so that its identity can apply to all that reside there, and most importantly, 

We can change the systems that limit us. 

 

Work Cited 

“2019 New York Schools: Public, Charter, & Private School Ratings.” 2019 New York Schools | Public, Charter, & Private School Ratings, Great Schools , 1 Sept. 2019, www.greatschools.org/new-york/.

“Horace Greeley Home – Chappaqua Central School District.” District Home – Chappaqua Central School District, Chappaqua Union Free School District , 2 Sept. 2019,www.ccsd.ws/horace-greeley-home.

“Ossining UFSD.” Ossining Union Free School District, Ossining Union Free School District, 10 Sept. 2019, ossiningufsd.org/schools/ohs/.

“Race and Ethnicity in Westchester County, New York (County).” The Demographic Statistical Atlas of the United States – Statistical Atlas, U.S Census Bureau, 1 Sept. 2018, statisticalatlas.com/county/New-York/Westchester-County/Race-and-Ethnicity#top.

“School Districts in Westchester County.” Niche, Niche , 10 Sept. 2019, www.niche.com/k12/search/best-school-districts/c/westchester-county-ny/.

“U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Westchester County, New York.” Census Bureau QuickFacts, U.S Department of Commerce , 1 July 2018, www.census.gov/quickfacts/westchestercountynewyork.

“WESTCHESTER COUNTY: NYSED Data Site.” Data.nysed.gov, New York State Education Department , 12 July 2019, data.nysed.gov/profile.php?county=66.