Meeting on the same page
Urban and suburban parents join a book club to explore the tensions of school integration.
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Some of the parents have read about it for years, filling the margins of worn books with notes, devising ways to tell their children.
Others have lived with it every day, dreading the moment their children come home and ask why their skin is different from other kids at school.
"I've so much
not been in this situation, that I'm not relating to it," Laurie Anello admits to the circle of parents at the Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, a part of Boston many white people infamously avoid.
"I've never felt this way," she says. "Definitely, reading this book makes me think about it more."
A few parents flip through the pages of "The Inn at Lake Devine," the story of a Jewish girl struggling to fit in a world that has already rejected her. The silence is stifling.
Sandra Walters clears her throat: "I think about it all the time." Some of the parents shuffle in their seats.
It isn't that they haven't talked about racism before. It's their third meeting, and they're getting used to it.
But the book club is the only one of its kind in a part of the country as segregated today as it was at the start of the civil rights movement, where 10 parents from Boston and 10 from the suburbs are discovering, through the books they are reading and the stories they are sharing, just how different their experiences really are.
Without this group, the parents' only connection would be through their children, who attend the same elementary schools in Needham - a small, affluent, mostly white suburb an hour outside Boston.
The inner-city parents send their children to this suburb through METCO, Boston's voluntary busing system, in the hopes that they might get a better education. Many parents in Needham laud the program; without it, their own kids would be raised in schools with little diversity.
But, the parents realized, if their children are already dealing with the complexities of integration as early as elementary school, then they themselves have some catching up to do.
The integration of Boston's neighborhoods and the surrounding suburbs remains, for many, a distant dream. If not for METCO, Boston's voluntary busing system, many of these parents would know little more about each other's communities than the usual stereotypes.
But today, these 20 parents are discovering that their worlds, while undeniably segregated, have much in common. That what they want for their children is really quite simple: a decent education; a safe environment; a life without drugs, violence, fear.
The parents in the Community Connections book group began to wonder whether integrating their own kids in school was enough. How can they teach their children that racism is wrong without crossing those racial lines themselves?
The group doesn't have any illusions about changing the world. But the parents hope that they might get people thinking differently about the examples they set for their children. And maybe, just maybe, more book clubs will start up in some of the other 32 suburbs that have METCO students in their schools.
"We just started thinking about how wonderful it would be for people to talk together and share their experiences," says Charlotte Sidell, the group's founder and a librarian at Broadmeadow Middle School in Needham.
The book club consists of two METCO parents and two Needham parents from each of the suburb's five elementary schools - the idea being that the younger the children of the parents involved, the more impact the discussions about race might have at home.
The group alternates meetings between Needham and Boston, and while they have met only three times, parents are so enthusiastic about the book club that plans to continue meetings for another year - and maybe to help start a second group for other parents - are well under way.
"The book club is a little light in a dark time of race relations in this society," says Gary Orfield, director of the Harvard Project on School Desegregation, who has surveyed 3,200 Boston parents whose children bused to the suburbs through METCO.
"The tricky part about what the book club is doing is going into fundamental and emotional issues like slavery and the Holocaust," he says. "It's sensitive."
The group first discussed "The Other Boston Busing Story," a history of METCO, with author Susan Eaton, who interviewed 65 former METCO students for the book. Involving parents in the process of integration, Ms. Eaton says, is vital.
"It's so threatening to, before you know each other, sit down and talk about race."
Through intimate contact with METCO families, Eaton has found that integration itself is not always foremost on their minds. "The goals of the parents aren't necessarily starting with the idea that they want their kids to be around white kids," she says. "Racial integration is secondary. Really, they're looking for a better education."
A way to reach out
Rebecca Drill doesn't want to talk to the press. She worries her words will be misconstrued, or that a lifetime of thinking hard about various issues may be diluted in the context of someone else's message.
But the book club is different. Ms. Drill wants to talk about this. She even puts off making Ethiopian flatbread with her six-year-old son - which she promised to do for his multicultural class - to tell her story.
The full-time psychologist and mother of three has lived in Needham for 10 years. She has attended every book club meeting so far, despite her many other activities. Drill is an avid reader, and can rattle off a list of books she has read on race in recent years, books she deems important - even necessary - to read.
"This book club is a way for parents in the community to bridge a gap, to really reach out to each other and learn about people on both sides," Drill says. "And my kids certainly see me enthusiastic about it. It's like they say: Actions speak louder than words. So I'm not just saying, 'Gee, you should be friends with all different types of people.' I'm actually doing it."
Toni Hill-Kennedy, a member of one of only a handful of black families in Needham, joined the book club with Drill. The two have been friends since Ms. Hill-Kennedy moved to the suburb from Houston three years ago, and they are both involved in a variety of activities that promote diversity.
Hill-Kennedy finds the group warm and receptive, and surprises herself at the meetings. "I always tend to sit back and listen to everyone first," she says. "We're providing a narrative ... about our own experiences, and it's a tough thing to do. But the group sets up an environment that makes it easier."
That environment may be the program's strength and weakness. While the parents challenge one another to think differently about racism, diversity, and the roles they play in their children's lives, these are people who already deem the issues important, who are already convinced that challenging discussions and open dialog are necessary.
Next: "Actually, we have the same lives"
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