On Oct. 6, I faced the toughest audience of the book tour: High school freshmen. Not just any high school freshmen, either, but freshmen at my high school, Rich East, in Park Forest IL.

It was an assembly for two classes — an honors sophomore English class and a garden-variety freshman English class. Ten-fifteen minutes along, the sophomores walked out, not because of something I did but because of a scheduling oddity. That threw me off stride. But worse was in store.

I started reading from To Love Mercy. Big mistake. I felt myself losing them.

They began talking among themselves. Standing up. Trying to walk out. Dissing me.

I tried not to show the panic I felt. A teacher in back called for order, told the standees to sit down. That helped a little.

I thought to engage them so I started asking questions. That didn’t work so well, but one girl did ask something. I don’t know what she asked, really, because I couldn’t understand what she was saying.

It’s at this point that I have to disclose an awkward fact: Almost all these freshmen were African-American. The reason I couldn’t understand the girl was partly ambient noise but partly her English, which isn’t the same as my English.

Those of you who know me, know I am not a racist; but it’s going to be hard to complete this post without sounding racist. Nevertheless, I’ll try, and let the chips fall where they may.

The next thing I remember was telling them the story of how a cross was burned on a lawn in Park Forest, in 1958, my senior year in high school.

Some of the kids did not understand the significance of this event. The teacher in back, Kara Bickhem (who also is African-American), explained; then Kara had to explain what the Ku Klux Klan was. I added helpfully that cross-burning was a form of terrorism. I don’t think my explanation made much difference.

Mercifully the assembly ended. The next period, I addressed that honors sophomore English class. This went a lot better. One kid said he liked to write things that kept the reader reading, and I was off to the races. I parsed the first paragraph of To Love Mercy. I even got to explain “in medias res” (look it up). The majority of this class were African-Americans too, but maybe 20%-30% were white.

In the course of the day, I spent close to an hour chatting with Kara Bickhem about high school then and now, education in general, freshmen in particular, and of course race. This woman is extraordinary — young, smart, tough, but with a huge heart. I’d have loved to have had such a teacher in high school. Some of the things she told me:

• Freshmen are uncivilized, unsocialized savages. (My words, not hers, but I think that was the gist.) They improve quickly, but still.

• Freshmen know very little. Somehow they’ve gotten to high school without learning the basics. I’d just had a chilling demonstration of this, so I had to agree.

• Corollary: Not much in the way of parent-child communication occurs in some homes. You’d think they’d learn about stuff like cross-burning and the Ku Klux at home, especially if African-American, but not all do.

Kara Bickhem’s “some day” ambition is to be in a job where she can affect how education is delivered in high schools. When she said it, I chuckled. Everyone knows education in high school could stand improving, I said, and thought of an experience I had 10 or more years ago.

I was doing a market-research project for a newsletter for high school principals, which required me to interview at least two dozen principals by phone. The interviews were from coast to coast. Some lasted an hour or more. What I heard loud and clear — especially from principals in less-affluent schools, but from some of the more-affluent ones too — was the lack of parent involvement. Society wants us to do everything — be educators, be cops, be politically correct, get the kids into Harvard — but we can’t even get the parents to come to school when their kids are in trouble, let alone day-to-day involvement, and we can’t be effective without parents’ support, the principals reported.

I still remember the genuine pain in these principals’ voices. Now, some parents work two jobs; some parents don’t have much education themselves; some parents can’t even speak English. But what parent doesn’t want the best for his or her children? And when the school calls to them for support, what parent could resist?

The day ended with a third assembly. Most of these kids were juniors and seniors. I felt this assembly went well, but afterwards I got another shock. Two Rich alumni were in the audience — Judy Lohr, president of the Rich alumni association, who graduated a few years after me, and Janet Hills (Wilkinson), who graduated in my class. They reported that several kids sitting near them had called me a racist.

Following the assembly, Judy and Janet challenged these kids. The kids said, ‘When he started talking about “white flight,” we tuned him out.’ (What I’d told the assembly was that my family had moved to Park Forest as part of the “white flight” of Jews from Hyde Park. This was just a fact. It was my parents doing the “flying,” not me; I was 14 years old and had no say in the matter whatsoever.)

Now, as I said, I thought this assembly had gone well; receptive audience, good questions, a nice vibe. The kids who thought I was a racist were not all the kids in the room, just some kids sitting in back where the dopers and burnouts like to hang out. Maybe these particular kids weren’t listening very closely to my words. Maybe they weren’t thinking about what I was saying. Maybe I was racist.

Whatever. When I heard this, I felt a great sadness. Here I am, author of a novel that I hope will stimulate blacks and whites to talk a bit more honestly about race, and this happens. It’s discouraging.

Park Forest when I lived there was lily-white. Park Forest today is pretty black — the 2000 census says 39.41% but, walking the halls of Rich East, I’m guessing the student body is 70% or more African-American. Kara Bickhem told me there was a period in the ’80s when “PF” became a multicultural magnet, a place where blacks and whites of good will moved to live in harmony with each other. I sense there’s been somewhat of a socioeconomic slide since then.

I had a hard time writing this post, and now that I’ve written it I don’t know what it all adds up to. I know my Rich East experience was anecdotal; I probably have no business even writing about it, much less inflating it with sociological import. I know for sure now that freshmen are savages and I’m damned if I’m ever going to talk to a group of them again. (Big talk but bullshit: If invited, I probably will.) I know I’ll never know the answers to the problems of race in America, and even using the techniques of fiction to ask provocative questions is probably a mug’s game. And I know, two weeks later, that I’m having trouble getting my high school out of my mind.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Amazon, ever incomprehensible, has lowered the price of To Love Mercy without explanation. It’s $9.72 again, a 35% discount. Get ‘em while they’re hot at http://www.amazon.com/Love-Mercy-Frank-S-Joseph/dp/0974478539/sr=8-1/qid=1160362410/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6059044-7704803?ie=UTF8&s=books

P.P.S. I’m off! Tomorrow … Barnes & Noble, Morgantown WV! Here’s the full schedule:

• Friday, Oct. 20, 6 p.m. - Barnes & Noble, 3000 University Towne Centre Dr., Morgantown WV

• Saturday, Oct. 21, 2 p.m. - Borders, 200 Mall Blvd., Monroeville PA (Pittsburgh area)

• Sunday, Oct. 22, 2 p.m. - Borders, 6670 Sawmill Road, Columbus OH

• Monday, Oct. 23, 7 p.m. - Borders, Dayton Mall, 2700 Miamisburg-Centerville Rd., Dayton OH

• Tuesday, Oct. 24, 7 p.m. - Borders, 11711 Princeton Pike, Springdale OH (Cincinnati area)