Brown v. White People

Recently Anna and I were talking about The Litte Rock Nine. She expressed, as many who have never experienced legal segregation, surprise at the anger and biggotry which was so easily spewed. We talked about her own school and life experiences and she noted that she had been in the majority until she got to high school.

I rented a small house in a really wealthy neighborhood when I moved to Lincoln. I chose to keep the kids in that neighborhood's very privileged school with the reasoning that their siblings went there, I didn't want to disrupt them, and that it is hard to argue with the test results and the classrooms. In a school of high achievers with fewer behavior and learning disabilities, my kids would get the attention that they needed and have a healthy and happy educational experience. That was my reasoning. It also means that they went to a predominantly white school with very few children of other races. I've always found it ironic that the surrounding streets are pilgrim ships. I mean, you literally arrive on Mayflower Avenue. Mary and Frank are friends with a brother and sister who were adopted from Khasikstan and they have struggled a bit being "of color" in a white school. The sister is pretty nonchalant about how she is refered to as "black" and that she thinks it's stupid since she's not African American and also, as she puts it, "Who cares?"

So from a white elementary school my kids moved on to a predominantly white, but mixed, middle school. And then the city's most diverse high school. When I drop Anna off, there are kids of every race and culture standing outside. There are kids wearing every manner of mall clothes, thrift store clothes, and retro clothes. There are girls wearing hijab. "On the first day of school at the convocation, there were people speaking other languages," Anna told me. Her science partner speaks Spanish when he calls his parents on his cellphone from my house. Her gay friend notes that "nobody cares" about a boy on the dance team at their school. It's a school where diversity is the norm and white middle class stands out more.

It is our neighborhood. But it was a conscious choice for me to send my kid to this school. I feel good about the choice. I wonder if I should have desegregated her sooner. A part of me that I don't like to acknowledge, feels overly protective and recognizes at least the fear behind segregation and racism.

"Wow, so you're like from the ghetto?" a kid asked Anna once.

"Yeah," Anna laughed. (It's kind of a joke in our family.)

"So, do you live next to drug dealers and stuff?"

"Nah. I live next door to Myrna," Anna said.

When people have a name? When it's not just "someone who lives in the ghetto," when it is "Myrna?" You feel different about that person. That is why de-segregation works. It makes people into individuals who are your friends and not just "those people."

When even a liberal, educated woman like myself has to have oral arguments for Brown v. Board of Education in her head? It's scary. Racism as a concept and racism as practice are two different things. People may say, and even believe, one thing and yet behave differently - particularly when it comes to their kids. Parents are most conservative when it comes to issues that affect their children. The parents opposed to desegregation when The Little Rock Nine walked up the steps to high school both vocalized and practiced their racism. I think now there is no vocalization, but there is still a voluntary pratice of racism. I am guilty of it myself.