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Meeting on the same page
Page 2 of 2
Beginning of article
"Actually, we have the same lives"
Elizabeth Vanallen fell in love with the idea of a book club when Ms. Sidell first called and asked her to join.
But tonight, as she watches her son get off the bus in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, she doesn't have time to think about racism and all its repercussions. She's got to get Craig Jr. home for dinner.
He saunters slowly toward the car, hands stuffed deep in his pockets as a halo of steamy breath rises above his head. In the backseat, a hat and two gloves have been waiting since morning. When Ms. Vanallen sees them, she laughs: "How typical."
The mother of two constantly asks Craig Jr., who is 12, and Cameron, who is 10, if the bus rides are too long, too tiring.
But they've been commuting to class since kindergarten. Sitting there for an hour, with heavy book bags on their laps, watching the scenery change from bustling city streets to glistening fields of snow, is all that they know.
The hardest part, Vanallen says, is that, at such a young age, her boys are confronting some pretty big questions.
Questions such as why, when they learn about slavery in social studies, all the white kids turn around and stare until they feel their faces burn. Or why, when they want their Needham friends to come home and play, they're afraid of getting shot.
Craig Jr. and Cameron are shy, soft- spoken, well-behaved. And they're both interested in their mother's book club. Cameron keeps pushing her, reminding her to finish the book. But it isn't always easy. Vanallen has only a half hour at lunch, and by the end of the day she's exhausted.
"We do 20-minute readings at the kitchen table," she says, "where each one of us reads our own book." She is determined to keep up with the group's readings.
But Vanallen isn't too interested in discussing racism intellectually. As a black woman in America whose first language is Spanish, her experience doesn't come from books. She likes to listen to other stories - and sometimes she'll share her own.
"It's very interesting to hear how they think about [METCO], because I know I was nervous, wondering how the other kids were going to treat my kids," Vanallen says.
"But when you talk to the parents, there's not much of a difference. Actually, we have the same lives. These are parents who like the idea of interracial schools."
When Eaton spoke at their first meeting, the author was most struck by what the parents share. "We talk a lot in this country about the huge chasm that exists between races, and the difficulty of communication across racial lines," she says.
"But after five minutes in a room with African-American, Latino, and white parents in a book club like this, you see that there's really not this difference. Everybody's acting like human beings, and like parents.
"And their concerns, no matter what side they were coming from, are taken seriously."
Lately, Vanallen has been thinking a lot about her voice, about whether it will carry weight with others elsewhere, or whether it will be nothing more than a message she passes along to her children.
But she also feels challenged by the discussions, some of which address more personal and immediate concerns - such as how her own children think about race, and how they treat other people, and how they are treated themselves.
When Vanallen thinks about what she wants for Craig Jr. and Cameron, the lines around her eyes deepen and she stares off, choosing her words carefully. "I want them to be something good," she says softly.
"The main thing is your heart. Go wherever, do whatever, but remember: Nothing good is easy. You work hard, you will feel good. That's the important thing."
Empty chairs
If anyone knows that nothing good is easy, it is the circle of parents gathered at the Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury at 7:30 on a Monday night. Many of them had to find baby sitters, or drive an hour into Boston, or pick up cookies and soda - not to mention finish the required reading.
But no one sighs or yawns. In fact, the first 20 minutes are spent naming a time and place to get together for dinner and continue the last meeting's discussion - a particularly heated debate about slavery and reparations that was cut short when the library in Needham closed at 9 p.m.
But after they settle on a time and place, they look around: Why all the empty chairs?
Vanallen, for one, couldn't make it to the meeting. She had to pick up a friend at the airport and, by the time she got home, was too tired to head back out into the night.
In fact, nine parents are missing. Maybe they didn't get the e-mail, some speculate. Or maybe they couldn't find a baby sitter. Or maybe they were just too tired.
But no one is here to judge. After all, they're not out to change the world, and they understand what it means to be busy.
Everybody shrugs, and brings the circle of chairs, only 12-strong, closer together.
Books that highlight race
Formally, the book group is called Community connections: understanding race and racism to impact school and community culture, and it comprises 10 parents in Needham, Mass., and 10 parents of METCO students in Boston. They meet every several weeks, alternating between the two communities.
A grant helps pay for 25 copies of each of the five books the group is reading. When the parents are finished reading their books, they return them to Charlotte Sidell, the group's founder, and the copies then become available to the community.
The group is reading the following:
The Other Boston Busing Story
by Susan Eaton (Yale University Press) A history of METCO through the eyes of 65 adults who were bused to schools in Boston suburbs over the past few decades.
The Accidental Asian
by Eric Liu (Random House) A former speech-writer for President Clinton recounts the shifting frames of ethnic identity as he grew up as a second-generation Chinese-American.
Slaves in the Family
by Edward Ball (Random House) A white journalist tells the legacy of his family and its ties to slavery.
The Inn at Lake Devine
by Elinor Lipman (Vintage Books) In the only fiction on the list, a 12-year-old girl tries to enter a community that would have excluded her had it known her true identity as a Jew.
Down These Mean Streets
by Piri Thomas (Vintage Books) A Puerto Rican struggles both to survive in Spanish Harlem and to come to terms with his own identity.
Busing with a gentler history
METCO is often called Boston's "other" busing system - "other" because it is voluntary, unlike the forced desegregation busing of the 1970s that placed students from black, poor, and working class areas into schools in white, poor, and working class areas (and vice versa).
And unlike the violence that erupted in the '70s, only a smattering of controversy has touched METCO, which has existed for nearly four decades.
The program began in 1965 as "Operation Exodus." Founded by inner-city parents and activists, it was seen as a temporary but immediate means of providing Boston's children - who were attending infamously poor and segregated schools - access to quality education. Sometimes, children had to bus two hours to get it.
In the program's first year, 220 students traveled from their Boston homes to one of seven suburban towns. The commutes were long, the homework difficult, the cultural differences often uncomfortable. But many parents and children saw real benefits and applauded the program.
In 1966, Operation Exodus was renamed the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity.
It was three years after Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in a doorway and defiantly declared the presence of black students an "unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted, and force-induced intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama."
Today, about 3,100 METCO students travel to 32 communities. More than 4,000 have graduated from high school in the program's 36-year history.
By some estimates, the METCO waiting list has reached 13,000. Many parents sign up before their child is born.
But, according to Gary Orfield, director of the Harvard Project on School Desegregation, Boston is one of only five cities in the country with a voluntary busing system - the others are in St. Louis; Milwaukee; Rochester, N.Y.; and Hartford, Conn. The book club that brings together parents in Boston and Needham is the only one of its kind in the country.
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