Going to a high school graduation can bring up so many sentimental memories, even for the most jaded and snarky of bloggers. I attended Abington High School’s class of 2011 graduation a few weeks ago for my eldest nephew. Seeing that bunch of kids move on from high school to college, and the requisite sappy speeches by valedictorians and salutatorians, reminded me of the lessons I learned in high school and how they prepared me for the big bad world.
As I mentioned in a previous post, one thing I’m extremely happy about is the diversity in my hometown and in the high school from which I graduated.
Living in the city, especially in Philadelphia where racial tensions seem to infuse every conversation, every election, every poop scooping* with unnecessary meaning, I feel it necessary to temper my blog with a comment on where I grew up.
Oxford, Pennsylvania and the neighboring town on Nottingham where I actually lived are about an hour and a half south of Philadelphia. Rolling green hills, the wafting aroma of manure and Herr’s potato chips, and the jangle of Amish horse and buggies rolling down the shoulder of the interstate all paint a picture in the mind of Norman Rockwell, Wonderbread, and Country Time lemonade, I’m sure. But the other two things we had in Oxford were Lincoln University, the oldest black university in the country, and a booming mushroom growing business which brought a substantial number of agricultural workers, mostly Hispanic, to our town to stay.
As a result, my high school was surprisingly diverse for a redneck farm town. And for many reasons, many of the normal race/class associations that might happen in other small towns didn’t happen there. If you were poor, you were just as likely to be white or black or Hispanic. If you were wealthy or popular or smart, you were just as likely to be white or black or Hispanic. I’m not saying it was the perfect Gap advertisement or anything. There were still issues, no doubt. But coming from that environment, I never felt like it mattered that much what color one was. And that even applied to races that we didn’t have in attendance. I had no clue that there was anything bad to be said about Asians, Jews, Indians, or Eskimos.
But then I went to college. One of my first friends at Syracuse University, was a young woman named Melissa. As winter break approached, she mentioned the ski trip her family was taking and I innocently asked, “Oh, is that your Christmas tradition?” She replied, and I paraphrase, “Hello? Curly hair? Big Nose? Last Name, Silverman? We don’t celebrate Christmas, you insensitive adolescent prick.” While you can debate whether I should ever be allowed to mention the “C-Word” in casual conversation, what was so surprising to me was that she actually expected me to know all the markers of being Jewish-American. As if I had been sat down in pre-school with a bunch of felt board characters and played “Spot the Jew”.
The same kind of experiences followed me to Penn State and now to Philadelphia. We live in Mt. Airy which is widely considered one of the most integrated neighborhoods in the country. Not the most diverse**, as other Philadelphia neighborhoods have more equal distribution between races asseen in the latest Census, but the most integrated. I don’t know how they quantify such a thing, but from the neighborhoods my wife and I have lived in, we can testify that there seems to be far less racial tension here than in any other place we’ve been in the city.
But the assumption of racism still applies. People assume that because I am Caucasian, I mean horrible racist things when I complain about loud neighbors, turn up my nose at grungy taquerias with litter all over the corners, cross the street to avoid dudes walking pittbulls with weights chained to their collars, or refuse to stop saying Merry “C-Word” to other dogwalkers in the woods. I don’t mean horrible racist things. I do mean that I don’t like what you’re doing and I think it is bad for society and you should stop. I don’t care what culture you came from and whether it’s the norm.
Which isn’t to say that I don’t struggle with racism. I think anyone who says they don’t, no matter what walk of life they come from, is pretending. I have to check myself and my actions to see what part of my heart is motivating them. I think, in fact, that moving to the city, despite “the value of racial diversity” has actually made me more inclined towards inaccurate judgments based on race. But that’s the benefit of integration in our neighborhood, rather than diversity. It breaks down the normative race/class associations and actually allows us all to judge actions rather than color.
So, all this is to say that I don’t apologize for my attitude in my blog. I won’t pussyfoot around your oversensitivity and assumptions of my racism. That fact that I’m ignorant of all the crap I’m putting out there is exactly what we ought to all aspire to.
*The poop scooping incident refers to the time that the mean old lady down at the end of our block belligerently yelled at the Mrs. for “allowing our dog to poop in the strip of grass between her sidewalk and curb”. My wife patiently and quietly protested multiple times that we in fact haven’t walked our dog that way in months and furthermore, on the off chance he did poop there months ago, we always carry plastic bags for pickup. Madame Crustacean replied, “Well, my friend said it was white people let their dogs do that. You white?” When I do my yearly climb onto the roof to sweep the acorns off the roofs of everyone on the block, I admit that I don’t do hers. Partly because she was mean to my wife. Partly because anyone that nasty is likely to sue me or call the cops on me for doing her a favor.
**I have this debate online with Mt Airy message board posters all the time about the difference between Diversity and Integration. People don’t think it makes a difference, but as long as diversity, not integration is your end goal, your perpetrating racism by evaluating success based on color alone.
