Black/White Distrust II

Over the past decade I’ve had the interesting experience of substitute teaching in over 50 different buildings, ranging from inner city to completely rural, from less than 10% black to better than 90%. It has been an education.
I cannot say that I have particularly enjoyed my time in schools that were mostly black. Interestingly, the district wouldn’t let me sign up for the blackest schools. “They don’t want you, and you don’t want to be there.”
When I took an assignment in a middle school that was only about 90% black, a black teacher’s aide who seems to have pitied me warned, “You are an older white male. When you walk around here, you have a target on your back. Don’t forget it.”
She was so right. In that school—and only in that school—I had my briefcase rifled. Some days I had to break up two fights before the bell even rang. There were non-stop accusations that I was racist—try telling a black student that he has to do the same assignment anyone else has to do. He is almost certain to try to back you off with that charge.
I came up at a time when whites were being forcefully re-educated about using the term “black” rather than “Negro”. (W.E.B. DuBois had forced us to switch from “black” to “Negro” fifty years before—it gets confusing.) One day an angry young student vituperatively corrected me again, “We are called ‘African-Americans’!” she snapped at me.
I asked her what in the world THAT term meant—pointing out that I have a French neighbor who was born in Africa and is now an American. John Kerry’s wife qualifies—she is Portuguese, born in Africa, now a naturalized American. I admit my frustration resulting from accusation after accusation of being “prejudiced” or “bigoted” came to the fore.
My oldest friend, I went on, is married to a lovely French woman born in Africa, now American. I’ve known Dutchmen and Englishmen who qualified. I could have pointed out that my two lily-white sons could qualify—descendent as they are from a Swede who was born in Africa in 1635. For good measure, he was probably a slave trader.
The young lady marched to the principal’s office and declared me racist. The principal, a black man who had grown up in the neighborhood and even gotten himself expelled from that very school—and who knew me quite well—took her to his computer and showed her the history of “black” nomenclature. Then he sent her on her way.
Then there’s the line, “I ain’t your slave!” (I was citing a school rule.) Or, “You’re only telling me to be quiet because I’m black!” (No, because you are the loudest most disruptive fellow in the room—he had to grace to shut up.)
Walk into a largely white school at 7;00am. There will be smiles, occasional greetings. If they know you, they will call you by name and even ask how you are. Walk into a black school. They will studiously avoid looking at you. If accidentally they do meet your eye, you will see raw animosity. Eventually you feel like an idiot for smiling yourself. I definitely felt like I was a prison guard coming on duty—with the need to watch my back constantly.
The hostility is rooted in the absolute certainty that I am not there to do any of them any good. They trust no white person. It has to come from things their families inculcate in them—rather than any experiences they have yet had in their young lives.
And, if I’m in my right mind, I’d better no trust any of them. One time I left my reading glasses on the desk as I walked to the door to excuse the class. They were deliberately broken when I got back to the desk. (The school eventually replaced them—but they dragged their feet for months and, shortly after, dropped me from their list of available subs. I don’t miss it.)
Mendela showed us the way. After 27 years in prison, he dropped his own animosity and proclaimed everyone, black and white, to be a South African. If we can’t do that here—and make it stick—we are in for a long, rough future.