And the Storal of the Mory is...
I read this post, then I wrote the post below. Make of it what you will. It's late and I hope it makes sense.
Five times I've sat before my computer and tried to write a nice, neat introduction to the experience I'm about to relate, but the truth is, there isn't a nice, neat introduction. The experience simply was. I'm certain it's one that cannot be duplicated all these years later.
When my mother met my father, he was in the media business. As such, we moved. We moved, and then we moved again because the man my father worked for was constantly buying new outlets, which my father then had to transition to new management. The very first years that I can remember were spent in the north.
Early in my education, second grade I think it was, word came down that we were moving again. We were headed for the south, Mississippi, two hours north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My classmates were soon filling my head with horror stories of how I'd have to call everyone “sir” and “ma'am” or face a whipping, of hillbillies with dogs, shotguns, and no teeth. The worst stories were always about mosquitoes breaking through the window at night to carry kids out of their beds and eat them.
Never once did anyone say a word about black people. None of us had ever seen one apart from photographs in books or on the television, so it never occurred to us that there might be black people in my new town.
Before I knew it, the house was packed into boxes, loaded on the truck and, with a few final hog calls, my friends laughed their goodbyes. Slowly the terrain changed from flat grassland to rolling Ozark hills before we came to rest in a pine forest river bottom. It was still summer when we arrived in town, and there were no other children in the apartment complex my parents had chosen, so I spent a few weeks terrorizing my brother with the new oddity that was a pinecone before badgering my parents as I asked yet again if they were sure there would be no snow this winter.
I wish I could say something vaguely poetic – something in the range of cooler breezes with rustling, russet and golden leaves – had told me that it was time to return to school, but let's be brutally honest. It was the Gulf south in August. The only thing that told me it was time to get back to the books was that the grocery store moved all the school supplies to the area near the checkout stands and plastered the front windows with cardboard cutouts of pencils, rulers and apples. My mother insisted that there was no reason I had to go with her to register for school, so I stayed home, watching cartoons while I grumbled about the impossibility of the fall being so hot.
Monday morning came bright and just as hot as the days before it. As was my usual routine during the school year I woke up late, scarfed a PopTart as I tossed on clothes, and let my backpack flop behind me as I scrambled out the door to run after the bus. I was the last child picked up and we lived less than a mile from the school. We arrived in less time than it had taken me to run the distance from the apartment door to the bus stop.
I was still rummaging through my pack, looking to see if I had forgotten anything and took no notice of anyone around me as I filed off the bus with the other students. The bell rang, leaving me alone to follow the signs that would lead me to the office where, hopefully, someone could tell me where I was supposed to be. This wasn't my first new school, it wasn't going to be my last, and I was pretty much used to what I had taken to calling “New Kid Sickness”.
The one thing that never changes no matter how many times you change schools is that the office will always smell like coffee and have a hum of chatter in it. I stepped in and the chatter stopped, which frightened me because the only time I'd ever heard a quiet office was the day I got sent in for biting another student. When I looked over the counter, my first thought was that the lady there had been outside too much that summer. Being a typical third grader, I told her so. She laughed and I wasn't scared anymore. She pulled some papers from a drawer and had me follow her down a long hallway to my classroom.
When the door opened I looked in on my new classmates and immediately asked if everyone slept outside during the summer. The question was answered by a student asking if I was sick or something. It was August 1986 and that school in southern Mississippi had its first white student: me.
Perhaps I should clarify. I wasn't just the first white student. I was the only person in the school – student, faculty or staff – that wasn't black. There was no forced segregation, there simply weren't any white people in that school's district that would be of an age to attend, and hadn't been as long as anyone could remember.
The next few weeks were filled with questions only third graders would ask each other: Does food taste different? What color is your blood? Do you have a special bed? We were in awe of each other. They had never interacted with the few white people they came across other than to pay a cashier or wave to the postman on his rounds. If I had ever seen a black person, I hadn't noticed or interacted with them. No matter what we asked each other, regardless of what new facet of life we found to compare, none of it was ever approached with anything other than the wonder and innocence that only children that age can come at new things.
Just before the end of the school year, I was told we'd be moving again. This time we were headed for southwestern Louisiana. Mindful of the horror stories that had been proven wrong last time I notified my classmates of the change, I kept the news to myself. We spent two months of that summer in a hot and sticky town near the Texas border before moving on to a northern Louisiana town.
In north Louisiana I attended a school that was all white. I wondered for a few days where the black people were, before realizing that they all lived on the other side of the lake and that my school was on this side of the lake, where my house was. It made sense to me as a fourth grader. I live here, my school is here. You live there, your school is there. I was unaware that this was my first brush with racism in full force. Apparently, the women of the church my family attended had decided in the weeks before school that no child from there church could be allowed to attend the black school and had found the funds to send me to the private school via scholarship. One day I'll get around to asking my parents why they gave in to that kind of bullshit.
My time in north Louisiana lasted slightly longer this time – a full two years – but, as always, the news was broken that we'd be moving again that summer. Southern Louisiana this time, to a town called Carencro. So far, despite what I'd seen in my previous schools, there really hadn't been any culture shock. The first few times, no one else seemed to be aware that there was a real difference. The last time, I hadn't been aware of it due to the depth of that particular undercurrent.
The first school day came as it always had, and I ran after my bus in the blazing morning heat. Once on the bus, I sat down in the nearest empty seat. The girl already sitting there was black. I thought nothing of it and introduced myself. She eyeballed me before turning away and looking out the window. Hey, it was “New Kid Sickness”, and I was over it by this stage of my childhood. The bus continued on, bumping over country roads before making its way into the tiny town and pulling up in front of the school.
As I exited the bus, my head exploded. Or, at least, I thought it exploded. As I realized I'd been hit by something, I looked around to see what it was. Behind me on the steps of the bus was a rather burly white boy. He sneered at me and spit out “Fuckin' nigger lover!”
Now, I wasn't the most naïve of children, despite what this telling may lead you to believe. I've left out a great deal of detail in the interest of conveying only the most relevant bits. I knew what fuck was, and I knew what lover was, but somewhere along the way, I had never learned this “nigger” word.
The next words out of my mouth were “What the fuck is a nigger?”. I was envisioning something that looks like a red tick and leaves a rash on your legs like chiggers. Pow! My head exploded again. This time it was a black girl that had already gotten off the bus. “Fuckin' white bitch.”
I was sent to the principal's office and queried about the “fight”. To the best of my knowledge, getting hit by other people is not a fight, but I was the new kid, so what did I know? I asked the principal the same question. He didn't answer me, he simply took out yet another write up form and began filling it in. That year began my long education in ignorance.
Moral: Racism is not inherent, it is taught.
Five times I've sat before my computer and tried to write a nice, neat introduction to the experience I'm about to relate, but the truth is, there isn't a nice, neat introduction. The experience simply was. I'm certain it's one that cannot be duplicated all these years later.
When my mother met my father, he was in the media business. As such, we moved. We moved, and then we moved again because the man my father worked for was constantly buying new outlets, which my father then had to transition to new management. The very first years that I can remember were spent in the north.
Early in my education, second grade I think it was, word came down that we were moving again. We were headed for the south, Mississippi, two hours north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My classmates were soon filling my head with horror stories of how I'd have to call everyone “sir” and “ma'am” or face a whipping, of hillbillies with dogs, shotguns, and no teeth. The worst stories were always about mosquitoes breaking through the window at night to carry kids out of their beds and eat them.
Never once did anyone say a word about black people. None of us had ever seen one apart from photographs in books or on the television, so it never occurred to us that there might be black people in my new town.
Before I knew it, the house was packed into boxes, loaded on the truck and, with a few final hog calls, my friends laughed their goodbyes. Slowly the terrain changed from flat grassland to rolling Ozark hills before we came to rest in a pine forest river bottom. It was still summer when we arrived in town, and there were no other children in the apartment complex my parents had chosen, so I spent a few weeks terrorizing my brother with the new oddity that was a pinecone before badgering my parents as I asked yet again if they were sure there would be no snow this winter.
I wish I could say something vaguely poetic – something in the range of cooler breezes with rustling, russet and golden leaves – had told me that it was time to return to school, but let's be brutally honest. It was the Gulf south in August. The only thing that told me it was time to get back to the books was that the grocery store moved all the school supplies to the area near the checkout stands and plastered the front windows with cardboard cutouts of pencils, rulers and apples. My mother insisted that there was no reason I had to go with her to register for school, so I stayed home, watching cartoons while I grumbled about the impossibility of the fall being so hot.
Monday morning came bright and just as hot as the days before it. As was my usual routine during the school year I woke up late, scarfed a PopTart as I tossed on clothes, and let my backpack flop behind me as I scrambled out the door to run after the bus. I was the last child picked up and we lived less than a mile from the school. We arrived in less time than it had taken me to run the distance from the apartment door to the bus stop.
I was still rummaging through my pack, looking to see if I had forgotten anything and took no notice of anyone around me as I filed off the bus with the other students. The bell rang, leaving me alone to follow the signs that would lead me to the office where, hopefully, someone could tell me where I was supposed to be. This wasn't my first new school, it wasn't going to be my last, and I was pretty much used to what I had taken to calling “New Kid Sickness”.
The one thing that never changes no matter how many times you change schools is that the office will always smell like coffee and have a hum of chatter in it. I stepped in and the chatter stopped, which frightened me because the only time I'd ever heard a quiet office was the day I got sent in for biting another student. When I looked over the counter, my first thought was that the lady there had been outside too much that summer. Being a typical third grader, I told her so. She laughed and I wasn't scared anymore. She pulled some papers from a drawer and had me follow her down a long hallway to my classroom.
When the door opened I looked in on my new classmates and immediately asked if everyone slept outside during the summer. The question was answered by a student asking if I was sick or something. It was August 1986 and that school in southern Mississippi had its first white student: me.
Perhaps I should clarify. I wasn't just the first white student. I was the only person in the school – student, faculty or staff – that wasn't black. There was no forced segregation, there simply weren't any white people in that school's district that would be of an age to attend, and hadn't been as long as anyone could remember.
The next few weeks were filled with questions only third graders would ask each other: Does food taste different? What color is your blood? Do you have a special bed? We were in awe of each other. They had never interacted with the few white people they came across other than to pay a cashier or wave to the postman on his rounds. If I had ever seen a black person, I hadn't noticed or interacted with them. No matter what we asked each other, regardless of what new facet of life we found to compare, none of it was ever approached with anything other than the wonder and innocence that only children that age can come at new things.
Just before the end of the school year, I was told we'd be moving again. This time we were headed for southwestern Louisiana. Mindful of the horror stories that had been proven wrong last time I notified my classmates of the change, I kept the news to myself. We spent two months of that summer in a hot and sticky town near the Texas border before moving on to a northern Louisiana town.
In north Louisiana I attended a school that was all white. I wondered for a few days where the black people were, before realizing that they all lived on the other side of the lake and that my school was on this side of the lake, where my house was. It made sense to me as a fourth grader. I live here, my school is here. You live there, your school is there. I was unaware that this was my first brush with racism in full force. Apparently, the women of the church my family attended had decided in the weeks before school that no child from there church could be allowed to attend the black school and had found the funds to send me to the private school via scholarship. One day I'll get around to asking my parents why they gave in to that kind of bullshit.
My time in north Louisiana lasted slightly longer this time – a full two years – but, as always, the news was broken that we'd be moving again that summer. Southern Louisiana this time, to a town called Carencro. So far, despite what I'd seen in my previous schools, there really hadn't been any culture shock. The first few times, no one else seemed to be aware that there was a real difference. The last time, I hadn't been aware of it due to the depth of that particular undercurrent.
The first school day came as it always had, and I ran after my bus in the blazing morning heat. Once on the bus, I sat down in the nearest empty seat. The girl already sitting there was black. I thought nothing of it and introduced myself. She eyeballed me before turning away and looking out the window. Hey, it was “New Kid Sickness”, and I was over it by this stage of my childhood. The bus continued on, bumping over country roads before making its way into the tiny town and pulling up in front of the school.
As I exited the bus, my head exploded. Or, at least, I thought it exploded. As I realized I'd been hit by something, I looked around to see what it was. Behind me on the steps of the bus was a rather burly white boy. He sneered at me and spit out “Fuckin' nigger lover!”
Now, I wasn't the most naïve of children, despite what this telling may lead you to believe. I've left out a great deal of detail in the interest of conveying only the most relevant bits. I knew what fuck was, and I knew what lover was, but somewhere along the way, I had never learned this “nigger” word.
The next words out of my mouth were “What the fuck is a nigger?”. I was envisioning something that looks like a red tick and leaves a rash on your legs like chiggers. Pow! My head exploded again. This time it was a black girl that had already gotten off the bus. “Fuckin' white bitch.”
I was sent to the principal's office and queried about the “fight”. To the best of my knowledge, getting hit by other people is not a fight, but I was the new kid, so what did I know? I asked the principal the same question. He didn't answer me, he simply took out yet another write up form and began filling it in. That year began my long education in ignorance.
Moral: Racism is not inherent, it is taught.
posted by wlturland at
12:16 AM
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