There are a lot of things I want to say right now, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to say them. So instead I'm posting this story, which has been sitting in my drafts folder for months--according to the last edit date, the last time I worked on it was in February. I have no idea how it will sound to you.
When I was in junior high (forty+ years ago, in the mid-70s), we lived in a rural area in East Texas a half-hour drive from my school. The school I attended was about one-third black kids, two-thirds white kids. (That is purely a guess, I don't really know the exact numbers.)
We moved to East Texas from Dallas the year I started junior high, so I was the new girl. Lydia, the black girl who sat behind me in English, was just about the only kid in the school who was friendly to me for the first couple of months. Junior high sucks.
I was grateful to her and friendly in return, but neither of us made any effort to be friends outside of class. Generally speaking, the white kids were friends with the white kids, and the black kids were friends with the black kids.
There is no way I can pretend that there was no prejudice at that school, or in our part of East Texas. There were occasionally black cheerleaders, and there were a bunch of black athletes, but for the most part, the popular crowd (which I was not a member of) was all white, and the black kids kept to themselves. Or, to phrase it a different way, although it wasn’t conscious on my part, we didn't allow them to be part of us. The school had been desegregated, but it was still segregated.
In the summer, we had a few weeks of summer band practice every weekday morning. There was a black family with a band kid my age that lived near us in our rural area, and my mom decided we should arrange a carpool with them so she wouldn't have to drive me back and forth all the time.
I have a memory-- which is vague on details but strong in general sensation-- of listening to my mom arrange this with the other mom. My memory is that I knew it wasn’t going to work, and the black mom knew it wasn't going to work, but my mom forged ahead. Even forty+ years later, I can’t decide if I think she was brave for bucking the way things were, or oblivious to the difficult situation she was creating.
The first day I was supposed to ride with them, my mom was off doing something else so I was home alone. (I am ashamed to admit this. It's making me feel flushed and hot to even type it out.) I was at the back of the house, and I "might have" heard a horn honk outside, but I pretended I didn't. I didn't even go to the window and check. After a few minutes, they left -- I guess. Since I didn't look, I'm not sure what they did. I know they didn't honk twice. When my mom got home, I told her they never showed up. We didn't try it again.
Yeah.
I was 13-ish, not an age when anyone is at their best. I suppose I could argue that it isn't a 13-year-old's responsibility to change the world. But this is obviously, clearly bad behavior.
I didn't really think it out and I certainly didn’t think to myself "I am not riding to school with a black family"-- it wasn't nearly that conscious. It was just a gut reaction born partly of a thirteen-year-old's entitled anger at her mom (all the other kids’ moms drove them back and forth) and partly a deep knowledge: This is not done. This is not how we do things at this school.
If I were a braver person, I would have tried it, and maybe I would have forged a bond with that family, and maybe it would have made a tiny difference in a world of prejudice. But I’m not a brave person, and I didn't. I don’t say that as an excuse, I’m just stating the bald truth: I was not a brave child, and I didn't.
It is occurring to me only now (and maybe that is the most shameful part of the whole thing) that maybe I hurt the other girl's feelings. I've always assumed that she felt the same way I did, but maybe she had hoped that we would be friends. I don't know.
Am I culpable for going along with the informal segregation in our school? Yes, I most certainly am. Was I acting on some deep-seated personal prejudice? well, I must have been. Theoretically, in my head, I didn't have any problem being friends with black kids, but I also didn't have enough personal strength to buck the system. I just knew it wasn't done, and I wasn't enough of a maverick to push against the way things were. I wish I had been.
I have no moral to this story. I'm just thinking about it as I read Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson's memoir, which is terrific-- equal parts love letter to and indictment of the South.
1 comment:
I'm going to need to read that book.
We've all done crappy things, things we're ashamed of, things we're embarrassed about. Maturity comes with recognizing those things and resolving to do better, to be better. Sometimes, if possible, apology or restitution is necessary. Thirteen is such a horrible age anyway, we're so so young and wanting to be older and wanting to fit in and needing our family and wanting to be anywhere but with our family - honestly, it's a wonder we survive it. (Seventeen, on the other hand, seventeen is old enough to both know better and do better.)
Post a Comment