I’ll pick up where I left off last Sunday.
Our reunited family eventually moved into an even bigger house in a predominately white and Asian neighborhood. We were the first black family on the street. Interestingly, my two brothers and I had no problems fitting in with the neighborhood kids whether they were Asian or white. We had a lot of fun together. However, our acceptance ended at the school gates that fall. I never questioned why all the Asian kids on our street attended private schools. In retrospect, I now understand why. After the first week of school at the all-white elementary school, we were asked to leave and to attend the integrated school in a nearby neighborhood. This wasn’t the South; this was Los Angeles in the late-1960’s.
Although the Asian kids on our block didn’t attend the integrated school where we were sent, the students at the new school were predominately Asian. I was one of four black girls in the entire school but that wasn’t a new situation for me. From pre-school through 3rd grade, there was only one other black girl (Sheila) attending the predominately Mexican-American elementary school close to L.A. County Hospital where our mother worked. I adjusted fine.
It turned out that the Asian school was more academically competitive than the white school, but it was also much more poorly resourced than the ascetically beautiful whites only school. There were only bungalows for buildings, no gymnasium, no fancy playground, and no daily hot meals served in a nice cafeteria. Instead, we had a covered patio and a hot dog day every Thursday (plain or mustard). Despite the obvious economic disparities between the two schools, I thought school was great. I was challenged academically, and I developed wonderful friendships with children from different cultures, primarily first-generation children of Japanese immigrants. Much like my experiences with the Mexican-American children, I sampled their food and visited their homes after school to play. My multicultural upbringing taught me that beneath the cultural differences, we are essentially the same as human beings. While I was thriving at school, our home was descending into mayhem.
I never asked about the pressures that lead my father to drink heavily. But I suspect that the 1965 Los Angeles riots must have been difficult for him since he had worked so hard helping to establish a thriving business community there. My dad gradually descended into darkness and anger as he drank his Vodka and orange juice into the evening. Some days he brought home candy bars and games; other days, he brought home frustration and violence. I recall lying in bed some nights, waiting to see which father would enter our home. Sometimes, my mother knew he had been drinking and she would sneak us out the back door as he entered. We would spend time at a drive-in movie theater sleeping until she was certain he had fallen asleep, and it was then safe to return to our beds.
The backdrop of our family troubles was a turbulent in society where black frustration with discrimination in education, employment, housing, banking, and over-policing lead to unrest. It felt as though we were prohibited from prospering at every turn and that angered me too. But I didn’t understand why we were burning down our own stuff. In our outrage against injustice, we were destroying our own communities and our own futures. I realize now that my elders understood how ruthless and violent whites were towards us given little provocation, so destroying white neighborhoods was off limits. We had endured the Watts Riot in 1965. The same summer I was staying to Detroit, the 1967 Detroit riot broke out. I recall sitting in the living room with the lights off during part of that riot. My grandfather sat with his gun in his lap, determined to kill anyone who threatened his home and family. I wondered then whom he was afraid of. Was he afraid of other black people or the police? The answer was both. And that turned out to be the reality of black people like me for years to come. I’m afraid of desperate black people and fearful of insecure and entitled white people. Both are dangerous.
My overly-pressured, hardworking, but unpredictable alcoholic father was also threat. And so was the overtly friendly and wealthy white television producer who lived next door. This horrible man knew he could get away with sexually assaulting a ten-year-old black girl with impunity because he knew that my dad would be the one to go to prison for defending me. So, I said nothing and refused further entry with my brothers into his “fun” home. The deprived and depraved black gang members who stole leather coats from my two brothers were a threat. And the police who viewed all young black males as criminals were a threat. I was in middle school and my brothers were in high school when my grandparents decided to help my mother separate from my father for the second time. They provided her with a means to escape him and the now dangerous city.
We moved to the foothills of the San Fernando Valley, away from everything since the old neighborhood was changing and violence at the nearby high school was becoming a problem. Many of our neighbors had moved away (white flight). The black neighborhoods where we attended church and where our close friends and family all lived had become especially dangerous as desperation and lack of opportunity turned to criminality. Selling drugs, using drugs, and stealing from each other along with the pressure to join a gang for personal protection, economic opportunity, and excitement had become prevalent. My mother was right to move us out of Los Angeles so that we could be safe, build equity in a home, and obtain a decent public education. But getting the education we deserved turned out to be a battle of its own.
There was no question that my brothers would attend the all-white high school in our school district because it was the only high school. But I was given a choice between an all-white or a primarily black middle school. Having never attended a school where almost everyone looked like me, I chose the black middle school. That was an eye-opener on a variety of levels and deserves more attention that I can devote right now. So, I will continue the story in my next blog post.
My hope is that reading my story will help readers see the effects of systemic racism. The decisions lawmakers made to exclude black veterans from the G.I. Bill, to allow red-lining of neighborhoods, to allow the infusion of drugs into black neighborhoods, to ignore the reluctance of banks to loan money to black people, to permit the unfair hiring practices of businesses, the underwriting of targeted efforts within the criminal justice system to incarcerate black people while the media vigorously reported on it, and the blatant suppression of the vote, made it all the more difficult for black Americans to climb the social economic ladder. And now, just as we are beginning to climb up, there are those who want to push us back down.
People need context for understanding Affirmative Action and the Voting Rights Act and fair housing and police reform and educational equity and the push for sentencing reform. The formation of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs didn’t suddenly materialize as a means to harm white people. The agenda of DEI is to disrupt a system designed to make white people winners at the expense of others. The lingering white supremacists among us want to erase the context under which DEI was formed along with the history of discrimination in America so they can pass policies that stop black and brown economic and social progress. The goal is a permanent underclass to provide cheap (if not free) labor. The Republican Party in particular seeks to introduce a false narrative that America is now and has forever been a fair country where hard work and ingenuity will make anyone rich and those who fail, have done so because of a personal character flaw.