Walking Around the Oak Tree

All the MLK50 talks have left me feeling flat...I am not a racist, My father was from a German/Native American father and Irish mother. There is Native American and Black ancestry in my Dad's bloodline. On my Mom's side, there is Russian,Czech,Italian(Sicilian),Polish,French,and Arab ancestry. People thought I was Spanish, Asian, etc. While I was fair-skinned, my face was not necessarily "white looking".

My father, a Korean War Veteran, moved us to Piscataway NJ, away from the town of Carteret NJ, where we lived until I was 7 years old. In 1972, the town of Piscataway NJ was 50 percent rural and 50 percent suburb. Dairy farms and acres of woodlands were seen from roadsides. My father wanted a country life, as he grew up in the South of Florida, more on that later.

The Civil Rights Era left public schools with the Democratic, lousy idea of Bussing. That being the forcing of white kids to be bused to crappy neighborhoods, miles away from their homes and schools in their local district. The Black kids were bused from the projects and failing schools of Plainfied NJ area into Piscataway NJ, to promote a more "fair and diverse" opportunity for Black kids to get the education they claimed only whites were being given. I wasn't bussed because my family had one car, and my dad worked 20 miles from home. And one look at my Dad and you knew he wasn't white. He said."Ill be damned if I just bought a house in a good neighborhood only to have my kids sent to a crime-ridden neighborhood school." He also reminded the Board that he was a Korean War Vet. So, I was not bussed, and walked to school, which was two blocks from my home.

At good ol' Arbor Elementary School, in Piscataway NJ, We were taught the same course content, by the same teachers, Who were Black, My 2nd,3rd,4th grade teachers were all Black. Many of my classmates were so far behind in reading,writing that I found class to be totally boring, having to progress at the slower kids pace, Until I was promoted to a gifted class, which included the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading program, as well as beginners Stenography. I was in 4th grade. I could choose from hundreds of articles on a variety of subjects, and pop them into the speed reading viewer. I learned additional knowledge through this accelerated reading class.

I wish I could say I was making this up, But there was a deep resentment from my teacher, Mrs. Williams, who was an older reverse-racist who despised all white people, and was very verbal about it. It seemed to really annoy her that the white children were taking accelerated classes, while many of the black children from black-taught inner-city schools, now bussed into white neighborhoods, were still failing. Mrs. Williams never thought it had anything to do with her failures as a teacher though. Few black children could read well enough to enter the gifted program. And so, Mrs. Williams took her resentment out on myself and the three other white children on my class, Rather than blaming poor teaching. In my 4th grade class of of 20 children, the ratio was 16 Black children, and 4 White children.

Mrs Williams was the most heinous anti-White racist I ever met in all my 51 years of living thus far. She would taunt the white children to tears, going on for what seemed like 15 to 30 minute tirades of her one-person rallies, where she would tell the class how stupid white people are, how Black people are far more superior, and held back only by "The Man". The Black children knew enough to placate her by pretending to agree with her just to make her shut up. We all let her rant on and looked forward to her just shutting up. I never remember her teaching us anything relevant. She handed out ditto sheet papers, gathered them, and never taught us actively. She barely wrote anything on the blackboard. I noticed how the children's attitudes began to take on her negative ways,speech, slang. She encouraged the children to "punch out whitey" on the playground if they "stood in your way".And I won't go into greater detail, but you can get the general idea of that woman's hateful and unstable mentality.

At holiday time, my Mom, who was an excellent cook, would send trays of cookies and baked goods to school for the class. No other parents did. We were not rich, we struggled financially, but we thought Christmas and Easter time were important to share with our friends and community. On the day before Winter break, my Dad brought a tray of cookies into our class. Mrs. Williams took the heavy-laden cookie tray sheepishly, Asking me why I didn't tell her my Daddy wasn't white. I just shrugged my shoulders. I think that's how I handled racism for the most part, just shrugging it off.

I had a kind of a mutual crush. A dear little friend. His name was James Christmas. I loved that "Christmas" was his surname. James was like a gift, My little friend who made me feel welcome and protected in what felt often felt like a strange and hostile environment.He had light coffee skin, a soft, short close-cut afro, and a beaming smile that made me feel better when I saw it. He wore corduroy pants a lot. Funny the things we recall. I was quite good at doing voices, like cartoon characters, etc, And James would gather the kids around, while I did voices from Fat Albert, Bugs Bunny Looney Tunes, etc. and the kids would all laugh and giggle. James would take me by the hand over to the 5th grade kids and say..."Go on...do that thing...:, which was my que to start my cartoon voices...And when the bigger 5th grade kids cracked up, James would say"Told you she's cool." I don't know if he remembers me or is even alive anymore. I like to think he has had a wonderful life, and still smiling that big,beaming smile of his. A closed-mouth smile, he always smiled with his mouth closed. It was so adorable His encouragement , even for something silly like doing voices for fun, gave me confidence I desperately needed, I was painfully shy and insecure. James helped me so much with his encouragement.

The kids, in spite of adult negative influence, got along for the most part, and we would ignore what we were told about races, and we just get along. We trusted our ability to judge people for ourselves, based on what we experienced ourselves. It was the adults and teachers who were the problem. I didn't know what racism was until I went to school. It was when I shared what happened at school that my Dad began to tell stories about what he experienced.

Something would trigger Daddy, and he would open up and tell about small Black children being taken by White hunters to use to lure alligators. Put in wooden crates and cages, some tied with ropes to Cypress trees on the swamp banks. He saw a decomposing black man "lynched up" in the woods, he found him when he was going fishing. My father experienced both sides of racism, as did I. Daddy experienced being both the target and a witness. Being Native American and some Black, as well German and Irish, Daddy didn't look white. He had black,wavy hair, dark brown eyes, and tan, olive-tone skin. He could pass for what people called a Mulatto, or High Yellow. According to the 'One Drop Rule", if you had a drop of Black blood, you were Black, Whites didn't accept you, and Blacks thought you were too "uppity". Stuck in the middle Daddy was.

He grew up poor as dirt, and at one point, while My grandma Ruby worked, she left him in the care of Black woman who had kids of her own. At the time, my Grandpa Willy worked as a sharecropper. The "mammy", as she asked to be called, treated my Daddy like one of her own, with tender love and generosity of heart and spirit. He was bathed in the same wood tub with her other little little ones, fed at the same table, and he played with homemade toy dolls that were black. Daddy's older sister, Aunt Kat said that daddy didn't like playing with white dolls after that, as he grew fond of the black toy dolls My grandfather Willy Manhart was working as a sharecropper, side-by-side with Blacks, doing the same work for the same pay. Being Native American was worse, you were treated worse than Black.

There was no close-knit Native Americans to commune with, no churches for Native Americans, and living on a reservation meant poverty for life, poor health, sub-par schooling, and the FEDS pumped in cigarettes and booze into those Reservations , I think they did/do it to kill them off. Many Native Americans are alcoholics. My Grandpa refused to live on a Reservation, after his 100% Native American Mom, Pinta Rose, was beat to death by her husband, John Manhart. He left my Grandpa Willy and his siblings in an orphanage to rot. At age 14, Grandpa Willy ran off, worked odd jobs, getting around hopping freight cars by railroad. He never saw his siblings again. The land the government gave to Great_Grandma Pinta Rose, as a Native American land allotment, went to the man who killed her, John Manhart. John Manhart married a white woman, had several kids with her, and never took his children that he had with Pinta Rose out of the orphanage. I don't know when they were adopted. I looked them up online, they all passed away, dead and gone.

The point of this story?...We all hurt. We all feel at times like we are not good enough. we feel like we don't belong until we are made to feel like we do. Racism is much more complicated than we think. Love is the only hing that heals. Love and friendship is what prevailed over the cruelty of some adults around me. As Dr. King said, "The content of one's character over the color of one's skin". But I LOVE the colors, the differences, and we need to not ignore them, but appreciate them, as my Daddy did , holding the little toy black baby doll, while being tucked into a warm bed for naptime with a black child napping on both sides of him. Love is the only thing that will heal us. It sounds cliche and corny, but I really do believe this. You cannot force acceptance without love, you can't indoctrinate it, you can't politicize it, You can try, but it won't work. It must be human and felt with the heart.

There was a huge, towering ancient Oak tree on the Arbor Elementary school yard, the roots were thick, and swirled around the base like an octopus. My classmates played a games walking around that tree on it's roots, careful not to fall off into the imaginary ocean, where sharks waited to get us. If one of us tripped, the others would hold their hand, pulling them back to safety. We would walk faster, and faster, while we laughed and sang. It is a vivid memory, Children of different races, pressing on , around unseen corners, pulling each other up when we fall, Or when we're in danger. I think of that game and that old Oak tree, and wonder if those classmates are still pulling each other up in love.