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DEFINING EQUALITY
When Worlds Collide
I
was seven years old when our family moved from Colorado to Alabama. In my
youth I just wanted friends to play with; the color of their skin was not
a consideration. I was
fortunate to grow up with parents who were not racially prejudiced and
spent my early life in integrated neighborhoods. Initially, in my naiveté,
I never really noticed the friction between blacks and whites that was
growing around me in Alabama.
In my early teens my
closest friend was Betty, the girl who lived next door. Betty was Black,
but in my young eyes that didn't make her different. Quickly, and
sometimes comically, I learned that we came from two different worlds.
The first time I visited
Betty's house I noticed an unusual vase in the corner by the easy chair. I
went over to look at it quizzically while Betty grinned and said:
"That’s just my mom’s spittoon. Haven’t you seen a spittoon
before"? I told her that I hadn’t and she proceeded to explain its
use to me.
We hung out together and
often spent the night at each other’s house. Betty had a garden in her
backyard where she grew collard greens, okra, and black-eyed peas. The
first time she fried up okra (after dipping it in cornmeal) I thought it
was the greatest thing I had ever tasted. It had a sweet taste. I never
did care for collard greens or black-eyed peas, although to this day, I
still love okra.
On one of the nights when I
was sleeping over, Betty was watching television and told me to help
myself to anything in the refrigerator.
I saw what looked like a bowl of vanilla pudding, got a spoon out
of her drawer and put it into the bowl taking a huge bite. I immediately
went to the sink and spat the disgusting food out. I asked Betty,
"What was THAT?"
Betty looked at me
strangely and said, "That’s lard. Why?"
I explained that I had
thought it was vanilla pudding and had taken a bite of it. She laughed and
explained to me what lard was and how it was used.
Many times Betty’s uncle
would bring a huge box of comic books to her house.
We felt suddenly rich, and would spend days reading the comic books
together. In so many ways we were exactly alike. Other times Betty would
tease me good-naturedly about our differences, especially when she was
trying to teach me how to dance. I was shy and never could seem to move as
fluently and provocatively as she did. She would laugh good-naturedly and
say, "White people ain’t got no soul."
My youthful naiveté
changed when we moved across the highway. At first I didn't realize that
all of my neighbors were white. I just figured I hadn’t met any of the
Black neighbors yet.
Despite the move, I
continued to walk to Betty’s house to spend time with her. After about a
week, when we had pretty well settled in, I invited her to my new home.
"Are you sure that’s ok?" She asked. I was puzzled why she
would even ask such a question. She had been to my old house on numerous
occasions. Why would she think she wouldn’t be welcome at my new house
as well?
We walked the couple of
miles to my house and, as we did, I began to notice that Betty was very
uncomfortable. When we got to my house we went inside to play together.
Later, when dad came home from work, he drove Betty home. As far as I
could see, nothing had really changed with our move across the highway.
As quickly as Betty
departed, my new next-door neighbor, a white girl named Debbie, came
outside to yell at me. "How dare you bring that NIGGER into our
neighborhood!" she screamed. It caught me completely off guard.
"She’s not a nigger,
she’s black," I countered. "And she’s my best friend!"
"Then you’re nothing
but WHITE TRASH", Debbie yelled back at me.
I didn’t know what
"white trash" was, but I knew from the expression on her face
and the tone of her voice that it couldn’t be good. And thus began my
first real glimpse of racial prejudice, and the collision of two
worlds…Black America and White America.
In the months that followed
I started to notice more and more the racial tension that plagued our
city. As I moved up in the grades, I saw it becoming worse and worse in my
school. One of the biggest issues at the time was "bussing", a
practice that united us all in one manner. Both Black and White students
hated it. For all of us, our young minds just didn't understand why we
couldn’t go to the school in our own neighborhoods. Instead we were all,
whether Black or White, forced to ride buses great distances for from
forty-five minutes to an hour, to attend the school that had been selected
for us.
Bussing was the
government’s way of leveling the playing field and addressing the
inequalities in education that resulted from segregated schools. The
concept was that, in order for all kids to have access to an equal
education, youths should be bussed to schools that needed more kids of
either the White or Black race in order to achieve racial balance.
When I moved on up to
Junior High School (what we now call Middle School), I was lucky in that I
only had to be bussed three miles to attend classes. During this same
period I also quickly realized that the tension between the races seemed
to grow as we became older. Often when I would walk down the halls on my
way to a class, a group of black students would push me down the incline
causing me to lose my balance. If I lost my grip and dropped my books,
these same kids kicked them down the hall and laughed at me as I tried to
gather them up. I was both confused and humiliated. Very often I just sat
down and cried.
One girl in particular
seemed to enjoy picking on the White students that she felt were
particularly vulnerable. Quiet and shy, I numbered among this group, and
she told me I was to wear my hair a certain way, or wear certain clothes.
She further advised that if I didn't do as she said, she would beat me.
I tried to explain to her,
as well as other black students, that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I
asked why they hated me. They told me it was because I was white.
I asked why they hated me
because of the color of my skin. They said it was because white people
made black people slaves.
I told them I had never
made anyone a slave, nor did any of my family. How could we have had
slaves? We were from Colorado!
My feeble defense didn’t
seem to matter. To them, I was the enemy.
In the middle and late
sixties, the tension and violence in our city reached dangerous levels. My
parents heard reports of black kids stabbing and cutting people with the
metal picks, worn in their Afros. A few white teachers had been killed.
Every day mom and dad sent me to school with the admonition, "If
anything looks wrong, or you are fearful for your life, you leave the
school immediately and come home."
One day I was walking down
the hall to my next class when a teacher grabbed me and threw me into her
classroom, slamming the door behind us. I explained to her that this was
not my class. She yelled, "Stay here!" I looked out the window
in the door and saw about fifteen Black kids with picks held above their
heads running down the same hallway I had just been in.
A few days later the school
principal called for my attention in the hallway. He told me, as well as
several other students nearby, to go home immediately. The urgency in his
voice let us know that we were not to question him. I ran home shaking.
Later I learned that a riot had broken out in our school and several
students were badly hurt.
Mom
and Dad watched the news every night, and I remember seeing pictures of
race riots and marches. Once I asked mom what the marches were about, and
she explained that these people were marching so that Black Americans
would have the same rights as White Americans. She explained how the
schools in Black neighborhoods were old and in poor repair, so that Black
kids didn't have the opportunity for the same education as White kids.
That, she told me, was why I had to ride the bus so far to school. She
admitted that there were still a lot of problems, but also told me that
many Americans were trying to correct them. From that point on I watched
the news with a little more interest.
One day my friend Betty
told me there was going to be a demonstration and that she might go to it.
I asked my mom if I could go too. After all, I was for fair treatment for
everyone. Mom was fearful of the violence that often occurred at the
demonstrations, and refused to let me go. Later I learned that Betty's
mother felt the same way, and had similarly kept my best friend at home as
well.
Since I couldn’t march in
protest, I did the only thing I knew to do--I voiced my feelings on paper.
In one essay, I wrote that I wish everyone were blind. If everyone were
blind, there would be no prejudice. No one would be judged on the color of
his or her skin. They would only be judged by what kind of a person they
were.
I came to Alabama as an
innocent child free of prejudice. After living in the South for nine years
during the turbulent sixties, I unwittingly developed some. I never
changed my belief that people should be treated equally regardless of the
color of their skin. It was just that these experiences made me more
fearful of Black people. If I was walking down the street by myself and a
couple of Black kids were on the other side of the street, I would start
to tremble. I would also look quickly around to find another route while
praying that they would not hurt me.
Eventually we moved back to
Colorado. A few days after we arrived I saw my first Black person. He was
a kid about my age.
I felt the same fear rising
up in me as he crossed the street to stand in front of me. "You’re
new here, aren’t you," he inquired.
I replied that I was.
He smiled and said,
"Welcome to the neighborhood."
Pam
Sterner
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