Author: Mia

When Priyanka Met Nick: A Love Story is the latest piece in Vogue Magazine about her nuptials. Imagine if Priyanka said that of all the places she lived in the United States, Newton was by far the best and that should she ever wanted to raise children in the United States, she would want to live here.

Image from Vogue

Instead, Newton North High School was an emotionally scarring experience for her. The racism and bullying that she experienced were such that she decided to leave the United States after that year. And get this: She lived in Quens, New York and Cedar Rapids in IOWA!  Iowa is where elementary teachers dressed up as MAGA wall!

Newton has the distinction of being more racist than Iowa for Priyanka Chopra, who, by the way, has 23.6 million followers on Twitter, and 39 million followers on Facebook. It’s not a stretch to say that millions upon millions of people will read this article in which NNHS is called out for racism. Will this affect people from wanting to move to Newton? Will this affect property values? Who knows? But it could have easily gone the other way. Newton North High School did not have to be the worst experience of bullying in Chopra’s life.

“When she was twelve, Chopra visited relatives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and was amazed that students didn’t wear uniforms. She asked her mother to let her stay in America for high school. “That was my teenage vanity,” Chopra says, laughing. “I was like: I get to be cute? Girls are wearing makeup and their hair down. Land of the free, here I come!”

She spent part of her ninth-grade year in Cedar Rapids, and the rest with relatives in Queens, New York. Tenth grade she spent with extended family in Indianapolis, Indiana; eleventh grade in Newton, Massachusetts. Her favorite city was New York. “Because it was Queens,” she says. “So diverse, so fun.” She discovered hip-hop. “I had braids. It was a whole thing—puffer jackets, I was in love with Tupac. I wore black for 20 days when he was killed.”

She was less crazy about Newton, where she was subjected to racist taunts at school. (“Go back on the elephant you came on,” she remembers. And “Oh, my God, do you smell the curry?”) “It really marked the way I felt and my self-esteem.” Chopra decided she’d had enough of the U.S. “I wanted to go back to the uniform.”

Have things changed? Is Newton North High School less racist? My experience five years ago with Thoroughly Modern Millie says that it has not. And has there been any changes to address racism in general in the school system curriculum? My children have not experienced any. They have gone through anti-bullying training, SOS suicide prevention training, and stranger danger training. But nothing on racism. As if it didn’t exist. But it does, and it rears its head loudly at times, but quietly through micro-aggressions a lot more frequently.