The responses to “Trashed by freshmen” are inching toward 50, or
about 8% of the 600 or so persons on this list. Talk about touching a
nerve. Last time I gave the teachers their voices. This time, it’s everyone
else’s turn.

To refresh you, the original rant was about my visit to my old high
school, Rich East (formerly Rich Township) in Park Forest IL, where the
demographic has shifted from 100% lily-white middle-class when I lived
there (the ’50s), to heavily, possibly majority, African-American and
not-certain-what-social-class today. At Rich, I had the unpleasant
experiences of (a) being disrespected by a group of mostly African-
American freshmen and (b) being called a racist by a handful of other
African-American students because I’d used the term “white flight” to
describe my (white) family’s move from Chicago’s South Side to “PF.”

The first voices you will hear are, rightly, those of three of my fellow
Rich High graduates.

From the [white] woman who overheard, then challenged, the black kids
who’d called me a racist: “I don’t think it’s possible for anybody from our
class (and probably other classes too) to not notice the ratio of blacks to
whites [at Rich High today]. It’s so different. It’s not bad. It’s not good.
It just is.

“In my opinion, it’s too bad that fact cannot be mentioned without
sounding racist. I don’t know about you but I feel like I have to walk
on eggshells if I talk about race crap so I don’t sound racist but maybe
just mentioning it makes me racist. (I don’t think I am. I never
thought I was.) Who knows.

“I believe way tooooo many people are far too sensitive to comments
about race. Like the kids who took offense at some of your remarks about
‘White Flight’, ‘Cross Burning’, etc. I say you were just stating
facts, making observations and sharing your experiences. Too bad some
of the kids didn’t see it that way. It seems like so many of these kids
have a chip on their shoulder and don’t even know why (i.e., not even
knowing about the Klan or cross burning).

“At the risk of sounding like a really big racist I must say — I don’t
like the fact that blacks can say whatever they please but if whites
speak their mind, ‘They’re Racist!’ I don’t get it. Set me straight …”

From a [white] woman who graduated a few years after me: “I remember
when the first Black family moved to ‘PF.’ As a kid growing up in that
all-white village, I had not been exposed to overt racism until then.
My wonderful mother baked a pan of chocolate chip cookies and brought
them to the new family in an attempt to let them know that not all PFers
were bigots. Though we, too, had left Chicago as part of the so-called
‘white flight,’ my parents’ goal was to offer their daughters a cleaner,
safer environment than we had in the near north side. … I had lost my
lunch money too many times to Beansy and Butch, who hung out in the
viaduct near my school. Beansy and Butch, BB-gun-toting preteens,
were white.

“I was fortunate to be raised by my fiercely liberal and unprejudiced
mother (Dad was another matter). And her lessons of tolerance paid off.
When my older daughter was in nursery school, she came home raving
about her new boyfriend, Charlie, who, she said, had brown eyes, dark
curly hair and a bright blue jacket. The next day, I took Mara to
school and asked to meet Charlie. Charlie was African-American, but
Mara was skin-colorblind.”

From a [white] guy in my graduating class: “I lived through the ’60s and
in fact I was attending Guilford College in Greensboro NC when the first
sit-in took place at the Walgreen Drug Store soda fountain in (was it?)
1959. I must admit that I was not among the first of the white boys to
volunteer to march with them, but then how many of us knew the
importance of the events that took place under our very noses? …
And how many of us took the time to teach our children about it? I
did. We home-schooled our two daughters and made sure that they
knew from whence they came. …

“Methinks that the very ones who call you racist have not taken the
reflective time to really uncover the deeper meanings in your book.
That is, if they have even read it.”

From the [black] woman who responded to my e-mails by accusing
me of being a racist. [Note: We’ve had several exchanges since then
and she seems to have softened somewhat.] “I think things are
somewhat better after the civil rights law of 1965, but so many
blacks, among themselves, are saying that it’s still so bad. And
you never know when you cross ‘the line’ with whites.

“I thought all of this would be over, behind — that you could deal
with people no matter what their color, etc. — but I feel it’s still
really bad. … You don’t know why and when someone doesn’t hire,
speak to, live next to, rent to, sell to, … because whites know not
to write/say/etc. aloud. … It just drives black people to feel as
though they are crazy.”

From a [white] guy I’ve known for many long years in an amazing number
of different connections: “The kids found in the back of the room after
freshman year are there for a reason. A good number of them will stay
antisocial. Some will drift back, but they are all there because a
‘leader’ in their crew, a hopeless loser with charisma, is telling them
that sensible, socialized behavior and achievement are uncool.

“I think the problem lies more deeply. Take away the opportunities that
came with a smaller America, and some kids give up and fail. If at the
same time you take away the risk of starving, then that number of
failures grows, because some people are motivated solely or largely by fear.

“Also, I suspect that those kids who dissed you have nothing to lose
from their behavior. So why not act like you’re bad and they’re so much
better? Hell, they probably do it all the time. It earns points with
their peers.

“One thing you can blame is the emphasis on granting self-esteem where
it’s not earned. In that, both the educational system and inner-city
parents, who scream bloody murder if their kids are granted only the
educational status they earn, are both to blame. I think the
conservatives are right about some things. One reason they don’t want
their kids in public education is the scene you witnessed, in which
ignorant kids feel entitled to trash you. …

“I think you were a bit naive to expect better from inner-city kids, who
have faced little of the racist hardships their parents did (in fact,
they get the opposite: coddling and congratulations AND they are widely
handed the excuse that their problem is racism).”

From a recently retired [white male] clergyman: “When you play your
role, you are pushing emotional buttons that don’t usually get touched,
and may even be unknown. This does not produce a warm fuzzy experience.
(Like: ‘I don’t want to hear that a cross was [burned] on the lawn of
my school. Ever! It makes me too scared and too mad. I hate hearing that.’)

“Finally, there is a difference between people applauding you and people
getting something meaningful that will in the end matter to them. The
first is nice, but the second is important. Try for the meaningful and
withstand the yuk. The cost of making a difference sometimes.”

From a [white female] neighbor: “My husband, a lawyer, represented a
black woman pro bono in a civil case. … My husband was happy to take
the case, especially since it was [his] first-ever jury trial. His joy was
tempered, however, because his client — who obviously wasn’t paying
for his services — did not show up on time for court and had no excuse.
She also was unavailable the day before the trial, when she and my
husband were supposed to go over her testimony, even though they
had agreed on a time.

“He was trying to explain to our daughter, a 24-year-old Ph.D. candidate
in history at Berkeley, what happened. He mentioned the fact that he
thought the primary problem with his client was that hers was a
different culture, one that didn’t always take personal responsibility
seriously. Needless to say, our daughter jumped down his throat and
accused him — and me — of racism. She said that if there was a
difference in ‘culture,’ it was the fault of white people who oppressed
black people. She also blamed the American justice system for
discriminating against blacks. I suggested that we all agree to
disagree, and basically that’s what we did.

“How can we make our children understand what the world is really like?
By the way, my husband won the case, and his client was very grateful.”

From a [black female] Chicagoan, referring to my inability to
understand that black freshmen who stood and responded to my
presentation. I’d said I didn’t think she and I were speaking the same
dialect. My respondent responded: “Her English is your English.
Educational levels aside, the main reasons for your difficulty in
understanding the female student are cadence, inflection and speed.
These characteristics are often cultural and consequently dismissed
as being inferior and unintelligible.

“Now, I am not naive. I know that noun-verb agreements are often flawed
and tenses mangled. However,just as you can understand (because you want
to understand) a newly bilingual Chinese immigrant who epitomizes the
‘American Dream’, so can you understand a moderately intelligent
African-American teenager impaired by dreamless nights. It really boils
down to familiarity and motivation.

“I was saddened by this anecdote. The fact that this girl had the
fortitude to stand up amongst her peers and ask a question during a
non-popular activity was overshadowed by your fear of failure. The focus
was on the clarity of her speech versus the fact that she was empathetic
to your plight and was trying to help. I hope she did not sense your
condescension.

“I write this in the spirit of intellectual exchange, not judgement.”

From a [white] guy whom I’ve known since City News Bureau days:

“I am filled with rage at the idea that these young punks should think
that you are a racist. … The fact is, the biggest threat to African-
Americans today is certainly not racism. Racism is a distraction, a
sideshow. The main event — the real enemy — of African-Americans
is African-Americans themselves. …

“Black people are not living up to their end of the bargain. They are
blaming other people — including you, of all people — for failures that
they largely responsible for and which they can remedy. It is not racism
that causes kids to drop out of school. It is failure of nerve. It is surrender.
It is sloth. It is accidie. It is the sin against the holy ghost.

“It is, I believe, depression. The self-destructive behavior — the suicides,
the shootings, the drug abuse, the teen-pregnancy, all the rest of it. …
I once mentioned this to a public-health professional and suggested that
black high school kids be given anti-depressants. She said I might be onto
something.”

From a [white] guy, a lawyer and fair-housing activist in the Chicago
area: “Don’t let the kids get you down. They are children — and they
are pretty much uneducated when it comes to the sociology of race. They
are quick to call ‘racist’ phenomena they don’t understand. They pretty
much don’t have a clue as to what Malcolm X or Martin Luther King were
all about (nor do most Caucasians of any age). Not to get too down on
them, but teen-agers of any race and social class by and large don’t
give a damn about much outside of their immediate environment and
experience.

“And when you write or speak about racial issues, something is seriously
wrong if nobody calls you ‘racist’ at least once in a while.”

This same guy offered the definitive word on that pesky term “white
flight.” Let’s close with it, and my thanks to all of you — friends,
acquaintances, supporters, critics — for your outpouring of response
on this topic:

“Good gads, there is nothing, absolutely nothing racist about the term
‘white flight,’ nor was it a term created by blacks. It’s a technical
term from basic sociology to describe one of the parts of the racial
resegregation of a community from all-white to all-black. Most
neighborhoods that resegregate experience white flight in which a
disproportionately large percentage of white residents leave the
neighborhood due to the in-migration of African-American households.
During this period landlords tend to rent exclusively to blacks — even
refusing to rent to whites — because they can extort a higher rent from
African-Americans while cutting back on maintenance (because rental
conditions are much worse within the black ghetto — bet the kids would
call [the term] ‘ghetto’ racist too, the ignorant children that they
are). Drop by http://www.planningcommunications.com and download …
‘Ending American Apartheid …’ It gives you excruciating detail on how
this all worked and continued to work.”

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I’ll be back in Chicago in less than four weeks. I’ll be appearing at
Barnes & Noble-Old Orchard, Borders-Oak Park, Centuries & Sleuths-
River Forest, Chicago Sinai Congregation, the Newberry Library, plus
five public library branches in Chicago, Evanston and Chicago Ridge.
If you can make it to any of these appearances, I’d love to see you.
Mark your calendar now. Check my exact schedule at
http://tolovemercy.com/frank_joseph_appearances.html.

P.P.S. Vote Tuesday as if your life depended on it. Because it does.