Help with Wilmington/Billerica/Tewksbury area (Boston, Cambridge: middle-class, fit in, home)

[Excalibur78]

My fiance and I are looking at place to buy in Wilmington, Billerica, & Tewksbury right now due to location and price. She's a school teacher in Hartford, CT right now so she raised some good questions. We're wondering about the school systems as well as racial acceptance. She is african-america and I am white so we want to find a place that if/when we have kids that they would fit in. Does anyone have anything they could share?


Thanks,

David

[ogre]

I don't know a lot about the schools in any of these towns. All are fairly typical middle-class suburban towns. This makes the chances good that the schools would at least be solid in quality, but I don't know details.

Regarding race, like most suburbs of Boston, these towns are very white, so of course your own preferences about what kind of racial mix you would want the local population to have will affect your comfort in living there. As far as the way you could expect others to treat you, I think that in typical mostly white middle-class suburbs of Boston people will generally treat a mixed-race couple fine. The kind of problems you might encounter would most likely involve some white-guilt kind of prejudices, where people could go overboard to try to be nice, to the point that it could seem patronizing. Aside from the possibility that you may encounter the occasional jerk anywhere, you would be unlikely to encounter in-your-face racism.

As white as these towns are, I would think that any potential children might run the risk of encountering the same kind of rough treatment kids can give other kids who are big for their age or wear thick glasses, or are in any other way different from what most of the kids are used to seeing. I doubt that there would be much, if any, problem specifically targeting race, just that kids can sometimes home in on any difference. Also, having grown up in one of those mostly white town, and knowing others from that background, I expect it's likely that at some point teachers will talk to the kids about race. There may be a good chance that they will be kind of p.c. in the way they present these ideas, so that your children could find themselves experiencing some of that patronizing kind of behavior I described above, when the kids hear what the teachers have to say about race, and possibly get the idea that they are supposed to go out of their way to treat minority kids especially nicely.

I'd like to say everything would be perfect, but I do think that realistically there is the potential for these kinds of situations. However, I would expect that your general everyday interactions with people should go pretty well in towns like the ones you are asking about, and that so long as you didn't happen to encounter one of the bad apples you can run into anywhere you would not be dealing with blatant, hostile racism.

If you would prefer more of a mixed community if possible, that will be a bit tough to find anywhere really close to the area you're asking about. Depending on your budget, how set you are on living in a suburban setting, and how long a commute you could handle, you might look in Cambridge or Medford. As with the towns you are asking about, I don't know a lot about the schools in Cambridge or Medford. Generally these cities are more on the urban side in character, though Cambridge does have some less dense residential neighborhoods toward the northern and northwestern sides of the city. The first town that comes to mind when I think of a smaller nice suburban town that is fairly racially mixed by Boston area standards is Milton. Unfortunately it would be kind of a long commute from Milton to the vicinity of Tewksbury, etc.

There might be other possibilities, but, being that New England is generally a very white region, there is not a lot of racial diversity in the Boston area outside of Boston itself and a few of the inner suburbs. Again, though, I think that generally you would not find blatant racism to be a problem in the area you are looking at. If you could provide some info about where you and your fiancee will most likely be working, your general preferences on type of community (urban, suburban, rural, etc.), and your housing budget, people here would be able to pin down the best fits, either in the way of towns like the three you've aked about or in other areas, depending on your preferences.