One Class of 1980 recalls life with 'Brown'
Race was the elephant in the classroom that no one talked about. In September 1973, I entered sixth grade with the mostly white classmates who had been with me since kindergarten and African-American kids who for the first time had been bused from other neighborhoods.
The resulting social experiment - busing as a way to remedy segregation - made a lasting impression on me, my classmates, and the city of Indianapolis where I grew up. The effects of desegregation continued through to our high school graduation in 1980 and are still felt today.
I tracked down fellow students and teachers to ask what role they thought race had played in our education. Because the Indianapolis school board had fought desegregation, few efforts were made to teach racial sensitivity. Students were thrown together without any idea what to expect.
Petra Perkins, one of a handful of African-American students who had attended my mostly white elementary school since first grade, remembers thinking when busing was announced, "Thank God, I won't be the only one." But her relief turned to shock. "Many of the blacks who were bused did not share the same expectations about what they could achieve," she says.
The children bused to School 84 came from predominantly poor and working-class families to a neighborhood school where most - though not all - families were middle and upper-middle class. Ms. Perkins's mother taught her to understand the different environments between home, school, and the community in which she and her siblings moved. She learned to adapt her communication style.
"These kids would say, 'You talk so proper,' " Perkins says.
As classrooms became integrated, the rowdiness level went up. Teachers spent more time trying to keep order.
At the same time, we were absorbing a bit of black culture, and the African-Americans picked up elements of white culture. In seventh-grade English class, a skinny, brainy, white kid named Adam Bain recited the words to an Earth, Wind, and Fire song for an assignment on poetry. He did it in rhythm, like rap, and we all cheered. The black kids loved his performance - here was a white guy putting something over on a teacher, and at the same time validating the music they listened to.
But the moments of levity were underscored by an edginess. The African-American kids were understandably angry to find themselves on someone else's turf. Perkins says they resented busing; they felt they were being punished. The tension spawned rumors and misunderstandings.
One conflict had to do with personal grooming. The popular black hairstyle was the Afro, and the kids took pride in theirs. But, in an example of ignorance, some whites feared the Afro picks, 3-to 4-inch-long metal combs with handles. Kids walked around with picks sticking out of their hair. I can't imagine they would have dented so much as a desktop, but many times I saw a pick raised in a threatening gesture to other blacks as well as whites.
The curiosity went both ways. Brian Smith, a white friend, remembers in junior high when an African-American classmate asked to touch Brian's hair.
We were so awed by each other, and yet we didn't want to ask questions that might make us look stupid. Teachers and staff thought they could make race a nonissue by not talking about it. But that only drove the tension underground.
