I

I was nervous: The overcast sky brought waves of showers, and I was unaccustomed to driving on city streets. Unsure I could find parking (though I had a map), I worried I would be late. But I arrived on time and began walking to my destination. As I waited at a stoplight, a car, rushing to beat it, splashed water on me. I panicked. Soaked from the waist down, I thought I’d have to go home and change, making me two hours late. I took a chance and marched on, deciding lateness was more embarrassing than wet pants. The pants dried within half an hour. But as I settled into the orientation for new students, the disquiet of being by myself emerged—no one to sit by and talk to, no one to affirm I’m not a cipher. I graduated in a high school class of six hundred, and I recognized three of them in the opening session, but I didn’t know them. 

That day, we toured the campus and attended informational meetings in groups of seven or eight. At lunch, I sat alone, eating a sandwich in the cafeteria. I had taken a few bites when I heard, “Tom, would you like to eat with us?” It was Pat, from the same group as I, standing a few feet away. Tall and slender, her brown eyes had a hesitant look under her slightly furrowed brow. The subdued tone in her voice contrasted with the peppy confidence she conveyed in a morning discussion. She stood still, waiting for my response, her eyes focused between my chin and sternum, her smile fixed, and I noticed a faint trembling in her hands as she held them in front of her. Abashed at not having a lunch companion and surprised by her offer, I froze for a second. I didn’t want to be impolite, so I said, “okay,” trying to project self-assurance. Her smile broadened, and she became relaxed and animated as she led me to her table.    

I couldn’t fathom her overture since she was with others. Nonetheless, after an awkward few minutes, we had a good conversation, exchanging information about where we went to high school and our plans for college and beyond. As I recall, Pat wanted to be a teacher. One guy said he’d like to go to medical school. I don’t remember what I said, but it wasn’t what I became, a bureaucrat, though I probably mentioned an interest in political science. I began to sense I was in an unusual but hopeful place.    

Pat attended segregated schools, and I suspect her history with white people was as limited as mine with Black people. However, she held opinions and sentiments similar to my own. From our brief chat, I realized we both wanted success, respect, and the esteem of others. The next day, when we registered for our coursework, she suggested we sign up for the same English class. I was happy to agree to it. Our apparent compatibility allayed my lingering uncertainty about whether we could become friends.   

 II

I have relatives and acquaintances who regard Black people as less intelligent, capable, and virtuous than whites. This idea permeated their upbringing, as intrinsic as abiding by Christian teachings and honoring the centrality of family. The attitudes of my kith and kin ranged from a willingness to associate with Black folks (if shown proper deference) to relishing a lynching. But I grew up in surroundings distinct from theirs, at least in one respect. Without dwelling on it, my mother and a couple of her siblings made it clear they disagreed with the laws and social norms relegating Black citizens to second-class status. In their language and disposition, they were models of relative civility. Yet, I was reticent to follow their lead.  

As a child, I curried favor with the other kids, aping their phrases and opinions. Outside my parents’ earshot, I used cusswords like “shit,” “ass,” and “dick.” I ridiculed the overweight kids and those with speech impediments. And I shared the disgust of my peers (and teachers) over intermarriage between the races—Black and white couples having children with splotchy skin; it wasn’t natural. At the end of one schoolwide event, I joined in as we sang “Happy Birthday” to a Black kid, not out of affection but condescension; we were mocking him. His dark skin turned darker from the unforeseen attention; “I didn’t know they blushed,” one girl hooted. I pursued the sensation of feeling accepted and potent, no longer odd or unattached. Yet, though I often reached it, this mood never lasted. As it diminished, it turned into the uneasiness I had when doing something wrong but knowing I won’t get caught. I managed to “fit in” but understood I didn’t belong.  

 III

Before college, I had little contact with Black folks: a couple of encounters with an older woman who cared for my mother when she was a child, a man who bought eggs from my parents for several years, and two or three kids in school. Whereas my mother wouldn’t let us use the pervasive slur and was indignant when she saw a “whites only” sign on a restroom door at a courthouse, neither she nor any other adult refuted the notion of Black inferiority. Yet my mom’s views and injunctions, albeit narrow, had a tepid effect on my conscience. Although I remained mute around invective or belittling acts, I became mindful that speech and behavior could hurt others.    

Some kids resisted pressure from their peers, for instance, a boy, well-thought-of and well-off, his dad an airline executive (unusual though not unknown at the small, rural school I attended). I remember overhearing him ask another student something involving Black athletes. The exec’s son said “colored” without self-consciousness. I interpreted his demeanor, including his words, as a mark of refinement—a notch above my country-boy status. While I said “colored” at home, I didn’t have the nerve to utter it outside the house around my racist classmates and family members. Observing this brief exchange tapped a deep-seated sensibility: If I overcame my timidity, I could somehow become a better person. His chance remark planted a seed, but it took three years for it to break through the topsoil. 

After spending a decade and a half farming, my family moved to the suburbs, where I went to a school seven times larger than the previous institution. Used to getting noticed, I became a nonentity. I made a few attempts to connect with other students, and though some responded cordially, I stayed an outsider, unable to break into their cliques. At home, I took refuge in my room, lamenting my lack of companionship, my loneliness temporarily relieved by infrequent outings with a couple of friends from the old high school. Yet, during this melancholy year, I began to perceive the cultural shift driven by social forces like civil rights, feminism, and the antiwar movement. A teacher guided me to books, such as The Other America by Michael Harrington and readings about the oppression of Native Americans and prisoners that instilled an awareness of society’s sins. This new understanding permitted me to focus beyond myself and removed part of the gloom. Still, while the courageous protests against segregation and the earnest voices of resistance inspired me, I had a theoretical and vague grasp of these matters.    

Toward the end of my senior year, on April 4, 1968, an assassin murdered Martin Luther King, Jr. On April 9, the day of King’s funeral, Black students marched to protest Kansas City’s refusal to close the schools in honor of his memory. The police deployed tear gas on the protesters, breaking up the demonstration but setting off a disturbance that lasted five days. They arrested over a hundred people, and six people died from gunfire. All the dead were Black and unarmed. I lived about ten miles from the neighborhoods destroyed by the violence. And while I don’t remember the specifics of what those around me said, I recollect their angry and unbelieving tone. These white people resented the Black community’s demands for equality; some declared it in blustering tirades though most held their animus in silence (Nixon’s “silent majority”), manifesting it in their body language and aspect. The unrest ensuing King’s assassination reinforced their racial convictions. The city put a curfew in place, encompassing the outer neighborhood where I lived.       

When a long-time buddy asked what I thought, I hesitated, uncertain how to articulate my emotions and impressions. I couldn’t figure out if he inquired from curiosity or to bait me. My cheeks became heated from my qualms as I gingerly responded. While I don’t recall the precise words, I, in effect, said the inner city has severe problems our society has ignored, and the Black community was justifiably enraged. We shouldn’t be surprised at the chaos in the streets. This stance reflected my newfound comprehension—in the parlance of the time, my “raised consciousness”—and I knew, in my bones, the rightness of my position. The hate exhibited by most of the people in my orbit confirmed it. Pat and I met five months later.

IV

The classroom for English 101 had a cluttered presence with old wooden desks arranged in broken rows, neither intimidating nor inviting. I sat close to the front by an empty seat, buoyantly anticipating Pat’s entry. She didn’t show up.    

In freshman English, we spent the fall semester reading articles and essays on issues raised in the early to mid-1960s, such as civil rights, war, imperialism, the New Left, and poverty. My ten classmates, like me, commuted from the suburbs. Pat’s take on the topics we covered, as the sole Black person and from the city, would have been illuminating. But another sentiment weighed heavier than not having her perspective: She had spurned me.    

A few weeks after the semester started, I ran into Pat. I noticed her coming in my direction when she was around thirty yards away. She caught sight of me at about the same time, and we both looked down at the sidewalk as we continued walking toward each other. I tried to think of what to say, not wanting to betray my dismay even as I wondered why she rebuffed me. I raised my head when close enough to talk. She smiled, but her strained countenance reminded me of those moments in the cafeteria when she invited me to her table. She asked, “Why the frown?”  Perturbed that my visage gave me away, I forced a weak smile, trying to insinuate she misinterpreted my expression. A minute later, I said in what I hoped came across as a dispassionate voice, “It’s too bad we aren’t together in English.” She replied she regretted changing classes, but other modifications in her schedule made it necessary. It was a plausible but not persuasive answer. I imagined she concluded approaching me, a lonely person outside of her acquaintance, was a rash act. Disheartened, I searched her features for a glimmer of acceptance, but her demeanor made clear I had misread her intent when we first met. Over the next two years, we occasionally crossed paths on campus. Like indifferent neighbors, who meet by chance at the grocery store, we would exchange short greetings with a nod or smile. We never had a class together.    

About a decade later, I began working for a state government as a planner and administrator in the health, social service, and technology agencies, remaining for over thirty years. Some organizations dealt with the consequences of racial intolerance in their programs, and they all dealt with it in their employment practices. But in bureaucratic settings, it was easy to skirt the problem by making insincere claims (“we actively recruit on Black campuses”) while subtly resisting change (“we hire and promote the best-qualified people”). When assessing health and economic disparities, the emphasis centered on personal responsibility (“they need to change their lifestyles”) rather than social and environmental elements. The concerns and unfairness nonwhite people experienced didn’t register with me beyond sporadic spells of pity. Other matters held my attention during those years while mitigating prejudice and its effects turned into an issue I found tiresome. Then in the recent past, I stumbled on an oral history video of a former co-worker.     

V

In a quiet, steady voice, the pitch a few notes lower than usual for her, she talked about the ordeal of integrating a white high school in Georgia between 1965 and 1969. She and ten other Black students (out of a total enrollment of 1,100) confronted unrelenting hostility— taunted with epithets, spit-on, and bullied. She narrated these incidents without flinching, maintaining eye contact with the interviewer. As she detailed the abuse, her speech never broke or wavered, though occasionally it rose for a second as she depicted some event. One episode she mentioned occurred at an all-school assembly when some in the audience accosted her with vicious name-calling when she became the first Black student at that school inducted into the Beta Club. She said her mind went blank and didn’t know if she cried, hoping she didn’t.     

The bystanders unsettled me as much as the tormenters. Teachers would leave one or two Black students alone in homeroom for ten to twenty minutes, subjecting them to spitball and water pistol attacks. Pupils who weren’t perpetrators witnessed the mistreatment without objecting or passively participated by getting up and leaving if one of the untouchables sat at the same table in the library or cafeteria. 

My friend’s revelations stunned me. These depravities happened to someone I know during a period when I thought such rancorous displays were no longer commonplace. As I watched, I relived personal bouts of despair brought on by other adolescents who, for instance, refused to give me a seat on a school bus. Although humiliating, the hectoring I went through lasted a month, its scope minuscule compared to what she endured daily for four years. With my heart palpitating and my palms moist, I paused the video every twelve or fifteen minutes to regain my composure.    

VI    

In her interview, my former colleague told about a white boy who nominated her for student council president despite her objection the lopsided vote would demean her. As she appealed to him to drop the nomination, it dawned on her that his stance made him “feel good.” During the same era, I wanted Pat in my English class, so I could learn more about the “Black viewpoint,” which I felt was a worthy and noble gesture. My disappointment over her not being there didn’t lessen even after I knew unsympathetic whites comprised the class.    

In 1968, if asked, I would have said racism would not plague us in fifty years. Yet the income gap between Black households and white persists, unchanged since the 1970s, and Black babies still die at double the rate of white babies. The chronic sores of segregated education and housing fester unabated. Public utterances about race, however, have mutated, now more subtle as white proclamations of superiority have gone underground. We delude ourselves, discounting white supremacy and eliding the heedlessness of colleagues, acquaintances, relatives, and ourselves. We are blinkered Pollyannas.   

My friend and I have regular lunches and phone calls, and, from time to time, she matter-of-factly relates how she continues to sustain overt and insidious indignities because of her skin color. There are everyday slights, like oblivious references to “declining neighborhoods” where Black folks have moved in. But she also has white, progressive confidants who think they know more about her difficulties than she does, such as telling her she needs “ to get over” her resistance to attending a theater where a racist employee harangued her as a child. I’m taken aback by her accounts. I ask myself: What motivates someone to make such insensitive comments? I have yet to arrive at answers. For some reason, my mind wanders.   

– Tom Wade