Growing Up with Blackness
The Transformative Power of a School Bus
I wrote this a couple of years ago as a Facebook post for the boomer cohort I grew up with. If you want to know more about our story, you can read “Triumph in a White Suburb” by Reginald G. Damerell.
I grew up in the first town in the US to voluntarily utilize busing to integrate its school system. This was done in 1965 because our town had been so badly redlined that virtually the entire Black population lived exclusively in its Northeast corner. Through busing, Black kids could be distributed across our otherwise segregated local school districts.
Growing up this way, we never saw Black kids as Other. Yes, they were different. They had different physical features, wore different clothes, and had different rules in their homes. But that only made them different in the same way that WASP kids, Asian kids, Jewish kids, Irish and Italian Catholic kids, rich kids, new kids from other parts of the country, etc. were different. But they were just other kids, not Other.
And they were not a monolithic group. There were nerdy Black kids, stupid-ass Black kids, wannabe-tough Black kids, athletic Black kids, and just plain old average kid Black kids. By middle school, some picked their fros out as far as humanly possible and wore dashikis. Others were 100% more focused on girls than politics. Some were artistically talented, some were gay, some were funny as hell.
We hung out with each other, played sports with each other, dated each other, hated each other, got in trouble with each other, did school projects with each other — just like we did with smart and dumb WASP kids, tough and not-tough Jewish kids, cool and uncool Asian kids, etc.
We also kinda rubbed off on each other. I listened to James Brown and read the Black Panther newspaper and got a Huey Newton poster to put on my wall next to Ernie Banks and Albert Einstein. I wore crepe-soled shoes and highwaters. I played the dozens and tried to walk with a little bop when necessary. I learned to do my own version of code-switching. And, yes, I ate pork chops and collard greens watching TV while sitting on furniture covered in clear plastic.
At the same time, thanks to their time in my home, there are 60-year-old Negroes scattered across this godforsaken country eating bagels on Sunday mornings and saying things like “chutzpah” and “meshuggah.”
When we went out into the world after graduation, my schoolmates and I were amazed at how racially ignorant the rest of the world was. We were especially amazed at how dumb white people — especially those claiming to be “liberal” in their god-awful bougie way — are about race.
This was not because we were in any way better than anyone else. Lord knows, I am a person of exceptionally low character. It wasn’t any special enlightenment on our parents’ part. It wasn’t anything preached in our segregated churches and synagogues. It wasn’t our out-of-their-depth teachers. It was our environment — our divinely integrated environment. It was kids living together and growing up together like kids.
A half-century later, my former schoolmates and I are old fukkin boomers. We stay in touch with each other on Facebook and through reunions and suchlike. We are still amazed at the stupidity of the world — and with every passing year we grow more grateful for the kairos majick of our racially integrated suburban youth.
When I say bad things about white people, when I use the term “cracker” as I am often wont to do, my 60-something classmates don’t get upset or offended. They don’t defend themselves by proclaiming how they couldn’t possibly be racists because some of their best friends are Black and what the hell am I talking about. They just laugh and nod because they know who I am and what I’m talking about — and that I’m not talking about them. Only a hit dog hollers, and the word “cracker” doesn’t hit them because they’re not crackers. They’re not even that fucking white. They’re just who they are.
Tonight I love them very, very much — even the assholes among them — because even the assholes are not cracker assholes. Boomers in general have been a horrid generation, and the world will be a better place when you-all are finally rid of us. But it will also be kinda sad be sorry when the lived experience of our little corner of a cohort passes from the earth. We had the best childhoods ever in the bosom of the Imperium for that brief moment when we thought maybe the United States could free itself from its racial pathology. Alas, now our hope is in our children — who are cool as fuck and might finally decide to overthrow the system that we too despised before it subsumed us.
Godspeed Teaneckians of yore. Represent.