Lynness: a really, really long response to my July read

I have a feeling that this might ramble a bit and be long. I didn't
really read all of my July read. I picked it up kind of late and it
isn't the most readable book- lots of quotes, court cases cited, and
statistics. The title is "The Color of Their Skin: Education and Race in
Richmond Virginia 1954-89." I never got a chance to browse the adult
section without kids running off (or trying to), so I kind of gave up on
my initial intent (finding something recent about Jamestown, the burning
of Richmond in the civil war, Thomas Jefferson- since we just went to
Monticello in May, or about the many first in Chesterfield County
history - first grist mill in the US, one of the first (if not the
first) coal mines, first railroad, etc..- all in the area in which I
grew up), though I still wouldn't mind reading about those things. Then
I chanced to hear a spot on PBS about an upcoming program and hear some
startling quotes about what white Virginia lawmakers in the 1950's had
to say against desegregation in public schools. One, by the governor, I
think, said that white and blacks in public schools together would
produce a 'mongrel breed' and basically would bring Virginia down. A few
days later I jumped onto the library's web site and search under this
topic and found surprisingly few entries, none of then recent. I went
and got the book I chose a few days later and have mainly browsed it,
but have been thinking much...
I know I am prejudiced to some degree. We all are- generally people
prefer the known to the unknown; the similar to the different. I can't
remember where, but I read recently about a sociologist (I guess) who
had modeled neighborhood segregation: even if 2 neighborhoods start out
homogenized, with equal numbers of, say, black and white families, where
there are no 'clusters'- it kind of goes white, black, white, black,
etc.- if a white family moves to the other neighborhood, then there
would be an opening between two black families. And because we tend to
prefer people who are similar, a black family is more likely to move in
there. And the white family who moved is more likely to move closer to
other white families. So the balance starts to be disrupted. And, over
time, everybody moves closer to those like them and in the end, you have
one black neighborhood and one white neighborhood.
The whole book was about Richmond's response to Brown v. Board of
Education, the failure of 'massive resistance' in other parts of VA,
where whole school systems were shut down for months, and the token
acceptance but passive resistance in Richmond that prolonged the
segregation and eventually caused a kind of re-segregation: in 1954 (the
year Brown was handed down) the Richmond school system was 57% white. In
1989 (when the book was written), it was 88% black.
I'm not going into all the history and ado it caused- that was the whole
book. I was interested because in 1989, I was in 4th and 5th grades in
Chesterfield County, just south of Richmond, which at one point- before
I was around- had been ordered to consolidate with the Richmond school
system in order to make the Richmond school system (predominately black)
more racially even. I was interested because I attended a high school in
downtown Richmond: a magnet school, mostly white, sharing a building
with a Richmond city public school, mostly black. And because now we
live on the 'Southside'- some of the poorest and most crime-ridden areas
of Richmond are on its south, and though we live in the county, not the
city (VA is unique in that incorporated cities are not part of any
county- they are their own entity), urban sprawl draws it ever closer
and all the Title I elementary schools in the county are around us. And
because Isaiah's class picture shows 6 white kids, 8 Hispanic kids and 8
black kids. And his afternoon summer day camp at the school has about 5
white kids and the great majority of the rest (of a total of 60 kids
when all are present) are black.
I do not remember any black kids in elementary school. I am sure there
were at least a handful, but not many. I had no black teachers. Most of
this was a result of where we lived. Ours was a predominately white
neighborhood, well into the county. We were the poor people- we got
'adopted' by various organizations to receive Easter baskets one year,
Christmas gifts the next. We had free lunches at school, often food from
the Bishop's storehouse at home. We moved after sixth grade to near
where Nathan and I live now and I attended a middle school that had a
much higher percentage of black students (and got bullied by a group of
black girls in the locker room and ended up getting sent to the
principal's office for 'fighting'). Still, no black teachers. In 8th
grade I was encouraged by guidance counselors to apply for The
Governor's School for Government and International Studies, a magnet
school for gifted and talented students drawn from 16 counties (talk
about busing!) I was accepted and for high school went to Thomas
Jefferson High School, a still-open Richmond city public school in
downtown Richmond (with bullet holes in the Art Room window on the first
floor). The book actually mentions my school. It discusses the plans
Richmond had for revitalizing the public school system and for cutting
down the 'white-flight' due to the school situation. One of their
successes was a magnet school known as Community High. The book mentions
plans for 3 more magnet schools, one of them a Governor's school at
Thomas Jefferson, to open in 1990. Open it did, but not until 1991 after
protests from TJ students, parents, alumni, and politicians and a
compromise was reached that stated we would only be there temporarily.
(A couple of years after I graduated, my sister Kate, who followed in my
footsteps there, was with the Governor's School when the move was made
to the abandoned Maggie Walker School. Ironically, this was originally
an all-black school that became the oh-so-successful Community High
magnet school. I have no idea what happened in the 10 years after the
book was written to bring it down.) At the Governor's School I had black
teachers, but do not remember feeling any element of surprise at being
taught by black educators, and black peers, but both were in the
minority. 2 of my circle of close friends were black (and two were
Asian, one from India, the rest white). I am pretty sure that my black
friends, at least, at times, were called or made to feel like 'Oreos'
(you know- black on the outside, white on the inside) by other black
people, not just because they went to a school perceived by black people
as 'white,' but because they spoke like white people- no Ebonics style
stuff- and appreciated things that are stereotypically more white
culture- classical music, etc..
Anyway- all these things have been going around in my head. I know my
parents are prejudiced, and my grandparents more so. Each generation is
hopefully successively less so, but what am I passing on to Isaiah? I
don't know if our neighborhood, which is quite large, is more black or
white, but our street (and we live on the nicer end of the neighborhood)
is almost all black. All the kids at the bus stop are black besides
Isaiah and one other boy who will be in middle school next year. I have
very deliberately never said anything disparaging or stereotypical about
any other race to him. I have never commented on the number of black
kids in his class, or that his teacher is black. I greet people, black
or white, in our neighborhood. Black kids are as welcome in my yard
after school as white ones. But I'm sure he knows by my actions that I
prefer white people as a whole to black people. I have black friends,
but none close. I don't feel I relate to most black people, but I have
never really tried to cultivate a deeper friendship. Really, I don't
have many friends outside of the Church period, and our Church is most
definitely (in North America, at least) predominately white, and so that
sets up some limits. Really I know that, by and large, most parents-
black or white- try to raise their children right and keep them safe,
but I guess somehow I'm scared, deep down, irrationally, that my kids
might get 'brought down' more by association with black kids than white
ones.
But here's the thing...is it prejudice to want to keep your child safe
when crime statistics show that there is more crime in lower income
neighbor hoods and that those lower income neighborhoods here are
usually predominately black, or, increasingly, Hispanic? Is it prejudice
to not want your child to come home talking like the other (black) kids?
It is interesting to me that black politicians and businessmen, i.e.
people with money and power and education do not speak like the black
people all around me speak. It seems to more education a black person
has, the more white they sound. So I say it's not color you hear, it's
level of education. And is it wrong to not want my children to sound
uneducated?
I was talking to my sister about not being sure about sending Isaiah to
the school he is in now and she told me I was prejudiced. I responded
that the problem was not so much color as income. Now, before you go and
remind me that my family was the poor one and not get so high and
mighty, let me say that we had the gospel and we had a mother who stayed
home. Most of the kids- black, white, whatever- in our area and going to
Isaiah's school do not have stay-at-home mothers. Many in our
lower-income area are single-parent families. Those with 2 parents
usually have both working outside of the home. In many cases this cannot
be avoided, but the result is that the children are raised by the world.
In day cares since birth, in front of TV's for hours at a time since
toddlers, running around the streets without supervision, etc.. I don't
really want my son around these kids who know what they should not at
this age and teach him. I have a friend who moved from beside us to a
neighborhood (much more expensive than we could afford) where the
parents are well-educated and much more careful about the raising of
their children. But the Nephites had a problem with pride and
opportunity for education and level of income. Am I prejudiced against
poor people? (How can I be- I am one. Well, not really poor, but we
qualified for a 50% reduction in the cost for the summer camp put on by
the county because of income. We are...part of the eroding middle-class.)
So the upshoot is- I'd like to move into a better area- better
neighborhood and schools (although I have no problem with the academics-
it's the environment), further from the city- and meanwhile there's a
revitalization going on downtown, and now it's hip to be in the city
again, but if you want to be anywhere decent/safe, you've got to have a
pile of money. So the rich white move in to the nice places in the city,
the black population pushes further into the county, and the white
population flees ever outward, driving up the prices in recently rural
areas. More white flight- and I'm a part of it, or would like to be. Am
I prejudiced? What do I do about it?