A recent altercation at our local Farmer's Market got me to
thinking about how segregated the world has become. While
everybody on National Public Radio celebrates the "Rainbow
Coalition," and George Bush tries to get the Iraqi Sunnis and
Shiites to kiss and make up, I notice that I am friends with
fewer black people than I used to be. I once had lots of real
black friends, but now I just seem to wave to a few black
people in the distance. How did the post-Civil Rights world
ever get to be so segregated?
When I was growing up, black kids went to the black
elementary school on the other side of town. I grew up in
Ann Arbor, Michigan, where there was no official segregation,
but our schools were informally segregated, because
neighborhoods were. College was the first place where most
of us made real friends from other races.
In college, a black friend and I would get together and play
cards in her dorm room, while singing Supremes songs. For
those of you who don't know, the Supremes were a black girl
group out of Motown (Detroit). We were immensely flattered
when someone told us she thought we had been playing
Supremes records in there?we were that good.
In those days you got your radio from the nearest big city,
which in this case was Detroit?local radio was mostly farm
reports?so I knew all those great Motown songs. One thing a
lot of people don't realize is that they CLEANED UP THE
LYRICS when the music went national. It started out really
raunchy (if you don't know where the term "rock and roll"
came from, THINK about it for a minute).
One of my favorite college racial incidents was when a white
friend of mine interviewed a Chinese exchange student for
the school paper. She said that all Americans looked the
same to her, she couldn't tell them apart.
When I was in graduate school, I sometimes went out for
drinks with a black classmate and her husband, who was a
successful executive. She told me that he had been made to
take the service elevator one time when he arrived for a
meeting in a high rise building (and this was in New York
City!) And yes, I dated a couple of black guys.
The altercation I referred to occurred when I stopped at a
farm stand where a black teacher had brought a group of
elementary-school kids, who were also black, to see the
produce. They were gathered in front of the potatoes, which
were laid out in an extraordinary array of colors: white,
yellow, red and purple. As I was reaching around the group to
gather up some of them, one of the children stepped
backwards and I patted him on the shoulder so that he would
know I was there and not stumble into me. The teacher
instantly turned on me, eyes blazing, and shouted, "You
didn?t have to PUSH him!" I explained, "I wasn't pushing him, I
was PATTING him," and I patted the teacher on the arm to
demonstrate. I?m not sure he believed me, since he seemed
to want to be angry at someone, probably for the many sins
that had been visited on him in the past, like my friend's
elevator humiliation.
I notice that in TV commercials?especially beer commercials,
for some reason?the world is portrayed as very integrated,
with white and black friends interacting in easy camaraderie,
but reality doesn't seem to have caught up with that ideal
yet. In my experience, whites and blacks don't socialize with
each other much, and Asians seem to stick together as well.
Jews intermingle but seem to be most comfortable with each
other.
We're starting a film production company that, so far,
contains 2 Jews, 2 Gentiles, 1 Scotsman and 1 Black. I think
we should get a Hispanic and an Asian so we'll be fully
integrated.
Related Entries:
10-Nov-2009: On NOT Going to a Movie about UFOs
20-Oct-2009: The Laughing Buddha
11-Oct-2009: The Red Coat
22-Sep-2009: Four Days
07-Sep-2009: Portents, Synchronicities (and Coincidences?)
27-Aug-2009: Two Birthdays
12-Aug-2009: Held Hostage by Hummingbirds
05-Aug-2009: The Irish Milkmen of the Dog World
27-Jul-2009: Two Surprising Events
29-Jun-2009: Trickster Coyote
