Moving ahead

I want to write this next blog while the zeitgeist of the nation is freshly focused on race relations and marriage equality.  I won't be talking about the latter specifically, but the supreme court just made Gay marriage the law of the land, and I wanted to give my congratulations to all my gay friends who have gained a huge victory today.  I'm so happy about that!

 But this blog is focusing on race relations.  Here is the class picture of my fifth grade year.

I am  the girl with gasses on the bottom row.  I want you to note the difference between fourth and fifth grade.  My fourth grade class was incredibly homogeneous, as white as can be.  In fifth grade, the demographic was  beginning to change,  I mentioned the the kids from the Children's home attended my grade school, and indeed I recognize at least two girls who were residents of the Home, and they are both white.  The brown faces you see where simply a reflection of the changing community.  I mention this because fifth grade was my first real experience with blatant bigotry and discrimination,  And it was perpetrated by a friend.

Just to give you some background on my understanding of race in general, I want to tell a somewhat embarrassing story.  When I was little, we had a topsy-turvy doll.  It was one of those rag dolls with a big skirt, and if you turned her upside down, she had a different head where her legs should have been.  This particular doll was a "Nannie-Nellie doll- black Mammy (I know that's not PC, but that's what it was) on one side and a little white girl on the other.  Since it was all one doll, I figured it was all one person.  I concluded that, somewhere along the line we all just turned black.  I asked my startled mom when was Grandma going to turn black.  She let me know that black people were born that way and that was the end of that particular cognitive distortion! I think that times were so segregated that the only black person I had ever seen was an elderly black man.  Thus I created that very odd delusion from my doll!

Fast forward to fifth grade.The two black girls were Tracy and Clara.  Tracy was sweet and a little quite and Clara was bold and outspoken.  While they were not part of my inner circle of friends, I always felt somewhat proprietary and protective of them.  I wanted it to be my job to make them feel part of the class.  I think they were exotic and different to me,which isn't necessarily very sensitive or flattering, but it was better then hostility displayed by some of the other kids.

I was fairly popular and a leader at Harrison school.  Teachers liked me and kids liked me so I had no problems standing up for myself.  

My teacher that  year was Mrs, Movshin, who I adored.  We was firm but fair and gave us interesting assignments.  we were reading a story about a girl who attends a progressive dinner.  Progressive dinners are parties were you move from house to house for the different courses; so appetizers at one house, then go to the next for salad etc.  While we were discussing the story, one of my friends said "We should have one of those!"  We were talking about who could do which course, and Clara said "I could do dessert!"  My friend Lori say, "you can't be in it you're an N word" only she said the whole thing.  I guess I had heard that word before, but not in my house.  I didn't think about how insulting that was  I just looked at her, put my arm around Clara's shoulder and said "She can so be in the party!"  Because I was a leader, and Lori was my friend, she just glared at me and said no more about it.  

Skipping ahead several months, my Dad took the job as the pastor of the church in Jefferson City.  I have talked about this transition in other blogs but I haven't mentioned the send-off my teacher gave me from on my last day,  I was in the middle of reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little house book.  I think  I had read them all except one- "Farmer boy".  As a going away gift, the class gave me a hard cover copy of that book. All of the kids signed the inside of the dust jacket.  By far, the largest signature was from Clara who added "Your friend" before her name.  

I think I may still have that book around somewhere, but the dust jacket-and signatures-is long gone. 

I always wonder what it meant to Clara that I stood up for her.  I wonder if that iis why she thought of herself as my friend .  I hope she remembers me.  I certainly remember her and, although I didn't realize it at the time, I remember the lesson of how much she had to struggle for inclusion.