Nojojojo, who writes science fiction and fantasy under the byline N. K. Jemisin, is guest blogging at the Angry Black Woman blog. (Readers may be interested to know that Nojojojo has a story in the all female-authored issue of Helix that I wrote about a few days ago.)
Nojojojo writes about the recent supreme court blows against desegregation. She looks at segregation through a lens rarely discussed.
The bulk of my reaction is this: fuck it. Just let all the schools in the US re-segregate. Black students did better academically before integration anyway. It’s a lot easier to achieve when you’re not bombarded with negative cultural messages and social isolation if you do well. When I was in elementary school, I knew a few black and Latina kids who tested into the gifted program around the same time that I did. Most turned it down. I couldn’t understand why — until the day I walked into my first gifted class and realized I was one of only two people of color there. (There weren’t even any Asians; this was Alabama, remember. Though I hear a good-sized Asian population has developed down there in the twenty years since.) The next year I was the only one; the other kid dropped out. I stayed and did fine — academically, at least. Socially… well, there were consequences. My decision to stay in the gifted program branded me a sellout, because I didn’t do what the other kids had done. I was accused of “trying to be white” and worse. I had no black friends until late middle school. Some of the white kids were friendly, but it was a superficial kind of thing — there were certain things we just couldn’t talk about, and there was some inherent objectification that came with being “the black friend”. I got a lot of “Can I touch your hair?” and “Wow, I didn’t realize black people like to read!” Even for the handful who might’ve become true friends, their parents weren’t all that happy when they brought me home (to be fair, neither was my mother, when I brought white friends home). So while I did well in middle and high school, I often wonder how much better I could’ve done if I hadn’t been a treated like a freakish aberration.
Nora adds that she’s not “seriously advocating an end to integration. Too many people, black and allies, have shed too much blood to get this far. And there’s lots of evidence to show that Tatum’s model of education does work — I wouldn’t be here if it didn’t. It just takes time, money, and persistence.”
Still, like most things, the effects of racialization and segregation are more complicated than they appear at first glance. Nora refers extensively to Beverly Tatum’s Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? as she examines how the formation of race identity interacts with segregated, and unsegregated, environments. Tatum starts with the notion that “all Americans go through predictable patterns of awareness and internalization about race.” Nora draws on Tatum’s structural support, and moves to talking about her own experiences in education.
[At the end of the predictable pattern of awareness and internalization abotu race, is people] “becoming black”, “becoming white”… the pattern of development is relatively similar in whites vs peole of color — for example, both start out in a state of racial unawareness. For white people this is a general sense of racelessness — not so much being willfully “colorblind” as simply not noticing people of color as anything other than background noise. For black people (and Tatum does spend some time on Hispanics, Natives, recent immigrants, and Asians, but her expertise is clearly with African-American non-recent-immigrants), the initial state is called pre-encounter — they’re aware of race because it’s impossible to not notice if you’re black in this society, but they haven’t yet experienced any of the consequences of being black…
The breakdown of the “racially unaware” state for both whites and PoC is usually some kind of triggering event — a sudden, undeniable confrontation with the inequities of race. For PoC, this is usually their first encounter with racism. By the time black kids get to high school, they’re usually in another phase of identity development — immersion, in which they feel compelled to band together with others of their culture in order to survive an environment newly understood to be hostile. This small group then begins developing a collective sense of identity about what it means to be black. This group sense serves as a kind of protective shield until the individual is ready to develop his/her own personal definition of blackness. After that the group definition can safely be shed.
Tatum confronts the unspoken assumption of the “Why are all the black kids sitting together” question, which is “…and what can we do about this problem?” She explains that it isn’t a problem; that after being slapped in the face with the trauma of racism, kids of color need support to recover from that trauma, and the best people to help them do that is other kids who are going through the same thing. This way, they can reject the wrongness of racism and develop needed defenses against it, such as a stronger understanding of their own culture and its benefits. Because most white kids haven’t yet progressed beyond the raceless stage at this point — they typically don’t until closer to college — they’re no help even if they mean well, because their natural reaction is to dismiss or downgrade the traumatic experience (”Are you sure it was because you were black?” or “But I’ve eaten there all the time, and they’ve always been nice to me…” and so on). So the black kids seek solace from each other.
But here’s the thing. Immersion is, in its own way, incredibly superficial. Kids in immersion have no real clue how to be black; they’ve been whacked with a societal interpretation of blackness as “bad”, but they’re not yet sure how to counter that interpretation. So they cobble together their own definition of blackness, drawing on what they know and what society tells them about themselves. If they’ve been exposed to positive knowledge about their culture, they embrace positive manifestations as the norm. But when they’re bombarded with stereotypes and negativity about their culture, they end up embracing that as their standard. This is what I fell afoul of as a child — the kids around me had absorbed the racist notion that black people weren’t smart, were lazy, didn’t “talk proper”, etc. Because I rejected this, I was deemed insufficiently black.
I saw a different example of immersion when I went to college. Tulane was a predominantly white school, but it had a large (for a white school) black population, mostly because New Orleans was majority black and the school accepted a lot of bright local kids. Apparently that population reached a kind of critical mass, because the instant all of us stepped on the yard it was like some kind of racial Singularity — we were somehow all drawn together into a weird gestalt consciousness. There was a series of benches in front of the student center, and this one corner bench suddenly became “the black bench”. Everyone knew it and gathered there between classes. In the cafeteria — yeah, it happened in college too — one black person couldn’t just sit by herself. It was as if her solitude triggered some kind of disturbance in the Force; suddenly a dozen other black people would just appear and come sit with her. One time I was walking through the experimental psych building, humming “Summertime” by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and I heard the same humming from the labs on either side of me, and two other black students poked their heads out and said something like, “Whoa, I was just thinking of that song.” And they became my study partners.
When I was reading this, I tried to understand what Nora was saying by analogizing through the imperfect tool of my experience. I’m a non-practicing Jew who is ethnically Ashkenazic on my mother’s side. Culturally, I’m distant from any religious practice of Judaism — my grandfather was raised as an orthodox Jew, but became an atheist as a young man.
Still, I found that many of my friends when I was growing up were Jewish-derived, like me. Most of them were atheists, or Jews who practiced a reform variant of the religion. We (especially me) were isolated from the history of what it meant to be Jewish, and were left with certain tatters that we’d picked up from our parents, or from media stereotypes. What we created out of those experiences were remarkably similar. We saw ourselves as intelligent, academically oriented, interested in high art and culture, well-read, unathletic, calm and rational.
As Jewish children, we were able to create these good stereotypes for ourselves because it’s what we saw of ourselves reflected back at us. Jews were brainy, but not brawny. We didn’t get much of the penny-pinching thing, but most of us were from upper-middle class backgrounds.
In college, I found a mirror of this, except that the stakes now included some level of support for Israel (at least in my social group). I went to two colleges with large Jewish populations. In one, I found a group of Jewish friends who later ended up forming a pro-Israel group (I left the college before the group was formally begun, but later learned that it became quite extremist). In the other, I sought out a pre-existing group and went to work for the Jewish newspaper (which I eventually left due to its extremist position).
These cultures were something of a respite for me, particularly as a child, because I didn’t cope well with mainstream expectations of what children were supposed to be. I preferred books to running around, and was more interested in theater than pop music (which I’ve never gotten into) or the kinds of television my peers were watching. I was permanently lost on the concept of fashion, and tended to be yelled at for using large vocabulary words which were presumed to be curse words. Also, I was fat, and this study rings very true to me.
I wonder what kind of culture fat children would make for themselves. Would they segregate by gender? How would they reflect back the negative stereotypes of the media? Would they become consciously gross? Would they eat the way that the media suggests they do? Would the heterosexual boys act like Chris Farley while the gay boys and most of the girls traded tips on how to get away with bulimia or extreme diet plans?
And how would that culture evolve in college? I have no idea.
OK, that’s just where I go when I play with these concepts of grouping. To return to Nora’s brilliant essay:
Tatum makes the point that what I experienced at Tulane is common in HBCUs like Spelman, and in other environments in which a sufficiently large population of black students come together and are encouraged to positively express their blackness. This kind of thing used to be common, in fact, before integration. Once upon a time, academic achievement was as much a cultural ethic in the black community as it still is in the Jewish and some Asian communities. (Note that this hasn’t faded in more recent African immigrant communities, either.) It’s the sense of community that’s key. Many Asian communities seem to achieve this through the reinforcement of the extended family; many Jewish communities do the same, plus stuff like Hebrew school. But when integration ended, black communities fragmented; we stopped living in black neighborhoods, stopped patronizing black businesses. Black families, already fragile, fragmented as well, for a whole other set of reasons that’s a different rant for a different day. But perhaps the greatest loss was black schools, because that meant a whole generation of black children — my generation, and the ones just before and just after — grew up with no clear sense of who they were or what they were capable of.
Which is a tragedy, particularly since the model replacing it (integration) hasn’t been allowed to flourish long enough for its benefits to really take hold. The supreme court decision is a particular insult to Nojojojo’s generation, who had to sacrifice the positive tools that were already in place in hope of something better. They and their parents gave up something important, but the primarily white folks who sit on the supreme court decided the rest of us white folk were sick of doing our part.
I urge you to read the whole of Nojojojo’s essay. And add The Angry Black Woman to your daily reading too, if you haven’t. Their entries are always thought-provoking — and often funny or beautiful, too.
When I was reading this, I tried to understand what Nora was saying by analogizing through the imperfect tool of my experience. I’m a non-practicing Jew who is ethnically Ashkenazic on my mother’s side. . . . We saw ourselves as intelligent, academically oriented, interested in high art and culture, well-read, unathletic, calm and rational.
I’m a semi-observant Reform Jew of Sephardic extraction, and I was doing the exact same thing while reading this. My childhood friends were also mainly from Reform or secular Jewish families, and, without quite connecting it to our Jewishness, we developed the exact same collective identity: intellectual, academic, not athletic, book-loving, interested in art and culture. We formed that sense of ourselves in such a deep, powerful way that it is still very much present in all of our lives.
Thanks for this post. It brings up lots of interesting thoughts on identity development and consciousness on one’s “race”, which I can’t adequately articulate at the moment. Looking forward to seeing other people’s comments.
Many Asian communities seem to achieve this through the reinforcement of the extended family; many Jewish communities do the same, plus stuff like Hebrew school. But when integration [I assume she meant segregation] ended, black communities fragmented; we stopped living in black neighborhoods, stopped patronizing black businesses.
What do you think about using something akin to the “Hebrew School” model and creating “Black School.” Two hours after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays to get away from the integrated schools and learn about black history and culture (or dealing with racism and stereotypes, or African history, or reinforcing positive messages, or whatever the heck the organizers think is most important — its not for me to say.)
It sounds like there is a lot to be gained from both multi-cultural integrated education AND learning with a minority-group-specific critical mass. So why not create both? If Jews have Hebrew School and Greeks have Greek school and Christians have Sunday school, there may be value in creating that sort of infrastructure.
I’m sorry if I offend anyone with what I’m about to say. I’ll start by admitting that it is more an emotional response than a well thought through argument, that I haven’t gone through what Jemison has gone through, and may well end up concluding that what I’m saying right now is full of crap.
That having been said, this seems to me to be victim blaming. If a white woman wrote about how she regretted, say, majoring in physics in college because she was the only female physics major, the men never accepted her, and there were social consequences, people told her she was “acting male”, would we all nod and applaud her wisdom in wanting to go back to the more comfortable environment with fewer men? (Yes, yes, I KNOW RACISM AND SEXISM ARE NOT THE SAME THING! That doesn’t mean that they don’t have similar points and that similar problems aren’t sometimes caused by the disparate forms of oppression.) If people tell a black person who goes into a gifted and talented program that she is “acting white” then they are acting as part of the system that oppresses blacks and keeps them from being truly themselves. Both black and white (and Latino and Asian) cultures would be much impoverished if blacks and whites (etc) segregated themselves into separate communities and never spoke, never communicated, never allowed their members to do things that were more popular in the other community without accusing them of acting (fill in the blank).
Dianne,
I don’t think that Nora is complaining about her experience. She is documenting that it was hard on her. Did you read the whole essay?
Isn’t that sort of one of the the points? That the black community used to have much more support of academics, and that the lack of a ‘critical mass’ who supported academics (and other things) which is partly caused by integration has made that more difficult?
I don’t see the essay as a call to “keep blacks kids from doing things that are popular in other communities.” Instead, I see it as a call to “make these (good) things popular in the black community, as they once were/should be”
The larger the group, the more likely that you’ll have a critical mass of supporters for your pet project. Get enough people together and you’ll eventually find enough players to fill a baseball diamond, enough budding musicians to play in an orchestra, and enough high school math geeks to justify the BC level of AP Calculus.
But of course that depends on said people not excluding each other based on other categories. That’s where race comes into play. It makes the effective group size smaller via exclusion.
Mandolin: I’ve really been trying quite hard to analyze why I respond to this essay the way I did. There seems to me to be a little thread of advice through the essay that seems to tell young black kids, “do well–but not too well.” If you go into a G and T program you’ll be branded a sellout. If you enjoy reading you’ll be accused of “acting white.” Even the relatively positive university experience is a cautionary tale: make sure you pick a university that has a sufficient number of black students or you’ll regret it. Those statements may be true, but they are also very limiting. Following this advice means forgetting about any dreams of going to an Ivy or CalTech or University of Chicago. It is the sort of advice that I got when I was in HS: Do well, but not so well that you scare us. Pick a good college, but not one with students outside of your socio-economic class. Maybe that message isn’t really there. Maybe it is all personal ghosts. Eh, I’m explaining this badly. Maybe I’ll make more sense in the morning.
(BTW: I hadn’t read the whole essay when I posted before. I have now.)
Dianne,
I don’t see what you see in the essay. I think Nora’s expanding on the costs that have been paid in order to attempt integration — because it led to isolation, it also meant that children lost the ability to create as many positive definitions for themselves, instead defining blackness through the negative stereotypes offered by others. I think the college scenario is offered as a counterexample: in a place where black people can create blackness as a positive, they can enact positive-ness for each other.
I read Nora as saying that she thinks real, comprehensive integration that is accompanied by improvement for black people in real, substantive ways — an integration backed by enacted anti-racism — would be a good thing. But in the meantime, black children have been asked to give up the positive benefits that were caused by segregation, but also denied many of the benefits that are possible with real, comprehensive, positive integration.
I think that was an easier pill to swallow when there was a possibility that the eventual, better benefits of real, comprehensive integration were oging to happen someday. But now that the supreme court is busy undoing the work that’s already been done, the sacrifice of the positive benefits that existed in the unideal state of segregation have been lost,a nd not replaced by the better vision.
I certainly don’t think Nora is trying to bound anyone’s acheivement. She reports having been one of the children who “acted white” — but it would be problematic for her to deny that there were costs to that experience.
That’s how I read it, at any rate. Nora might be better able to answer further questions herself. Not that I don’t welcome hearing what you think, Dianne. I’m very interested in what you have to say, and I hope you’ll keep posting in this thread. At teh same time, you might want to consider bringing up some of your reactions on The Angry Black Woman site.
Mandolin said, “I think Nora’s expanding on the costs that have been paid in order to attempt integration — because it led to isolation, it also meant that children lost the ability to create as many positive definitions for themselves, instead defining blackness through the negative stereotypes offered by others. I think the college scenario is offered as a counterexample: in a place where black people can create blackness as a positive, they can enact positive-ness for each other.”
While isolation is a real problem, the most recent data I saw from the 1990s indicated that 80% of Black teenagers go to predominantly black high schools.
I think around 50% of black teenagers went to high schools where more than 80% of the students were black.
I don’t know the figures for how many black students go to schools where most of their peers are white, but if 80% are going to predominantly Black high schools, the number is really low because it is going to be a small portion of the 20% left.
Of course, Rachel. You’re right. I should have been more specific about specifically who was affected. Thanks for the correction.
I’m really dancing around that post, while think Nora does a good job discussion Tatum book and the issues related to being outnumbered in a racist society, there really are some factual problems with the post.
What I mainly take issue with is the statement that black kids did better before integration. It is wrong, blatantly wrong, but I don’t want to ignore the other insights in the post because they are useful.
The fault is likely in my analysis, not Nora’s substance. Do you think I should take out my editorializing and just leave in the link?
No, keep it how it is. My problem is just with the first part of her post. The discussion later is good, but I just don’t accept the idea that black students are doing worse in school post integration. When is get back from my vacation, I need to put up a long post about the integration issue.
My father grew up during the 50’s and 60’s attending all-black schools and all-black neighborhoods until he was part of a group of black students to desegregate an all-white high school for gifted students in math and science. The things that Nora is saying echo’s the things that my father has told me about being immersed in an all black community.
When my Dad went to the all black schools there was an evironment that encouraged excellence and a sense of community: your teacher was probably a black woman that lived in your neighborhood and attended church with your parents; the man who owned the corner store you walked past everyday probably got drunk with your Dad on fridays after work; everybody looked out for everybody etc. Your school may not have had the most up-to-date books but the teacher cared about you personally and truly wanted to see you do well.
Once my Dad got to the all white high school everything changed. All the black kids had to leave school together at the same or else they would get beaten up by groups of white kids; the teachers were openly hostile; the counselors suggested you attend the local trade school instead of going to college etc.,
While my father attended school over 30 years ago and things have definitely changed alot since then, what I am trying to say is that making sure that the classroom is racially mixed is not more important than making sure the classroom is an environment conducive to learning.
I’m all for voluntary desegration and people moving to whichever community they want to move to and being able to send their children to whatever community they want to send their kids too. However, there are advantages and disadvantages to a homogenous (racially, culturally, and otherwise) learning environment. After desegration black people were able to expand their businesses into other communities and they moved to wherever they liked, but on the other hand, the teachers in black communities now are almost all white people who don’t live in the neighborhood and much of that sense of ‘we’re all in this together’ has now been lost.