Writing about race brings a bit of a knot in my gut and I’m not
sure why. I grew up during the 1960s and 70s in Brooklyn NY, a hotbed for racial
tensions but somehow I was mostly removed from it. My neighborhood was one of
mostly White Irish, Italian and Jewish working class families that began to
integrate when I was around nine or ten years of age. I actually only vaguely remember the
White families who lived on either side of us. The two Black families, one
whose house was attached to ours and one on the other side of us were among the
first minorities to move into the neighborhood and lived there since I was
about nine years old. The Weeks family became good friends with my parents as
both families were active in our parish. They were from “the Islands,” a sort
of generic term that I never thought to question for greater definition. I do
recall thinking that it was odd that so many people kept moving in with the
family then out to their own homes. It was part of their culture to help new
families coming to the States to get settled by giving them a place to live for
many months, often a year or more before they found their own footing. I knew
some of the other neighbors grumbled about that, too many of them living in one house, or something to that effect.
On the other side of us was the Jones family. That had a
young boy a few years younger than I but he never played with us or rarely did
at any rate. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses and I recall thinking how different
that was for the neighborhood. Almost
everyone I knew was Catholic and most of us went to the same church and school. The other
families were mostly Jewish. And there seemed to be a less than positive
connotation about Jehovah’s…they were seen more as a bother coming about and
knocking on doors although relatively harmless. I don’t think I actually thought of
them as Christians! Despite all that, my parents seemed to like the Jones family and
they always chatted a few minutes whenever they saw each other. The Jones kept
to themselves which was odd for our block as pretty much everyone played
together and knew each other fairly well.
Despite growing up in
the big city of Brooklyn, I really grew
up in a just small neighborhood. Looking back I now believe that race was sort
of always in the subconscious of the neighborhood. I don’t really recall the tipping point, that
point-in-time when my neighborhood was mostly comprised of minorities and White
people were the statistical minority. I do
recall that leaving the neighborhood was something my parents began to fight
about with my mother wanting to get out
and my father wanting to stay. My father wanted to fight “white flight” but by the time I was in eighth grade my
mother saw the writing on the wall: that fight was lost. We stayed too long I
think. Somewhere along the way East Flatbush was no longer my neighborhood. I resented
that loss. It belonged to people I didn't know, some of whom spoke a language I didn't understand.
One of the first books in which I encountered issue of race
was The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle (Hugh
Lofting, 1923). In this the first book of Dr Doolittle’s travels, the good Doc
has returned to London from Africa and many of his African animal friends were
missing him. I recall I was starting to really
enjoy the book when I was stopped in my reading tracks: nigger, the word jumped off the page. It was a dangerous word and one my parents did not tolerate. Polynesia
(the parrot) was catching Dr Doolittle up on the events in Africa. Her update
includes a reference to ignorant niggers.
I wasn’t sure what to do. If I told my parents they would most likely not allow
me to finish reading the book. I wanted to keep reading, so I said nothing. But
the book continued to challenge my value system.
The book shares Dr Doolittle’s thoughts about the peoples he
encountered throughout his travels. He thinks of Africans as heathens, ignorant
and backward; he holds the same opinions of Native Americans. In its original
version it is a decidedly racist book.
While Polynesia was able to fly to London from Africa to be
reunited with her friend the Doc, Chee Chee, the monkey, had no such option
available to him. Chee Chee pines away the hours missing his friend while
sitting by a pier and watching African travelers board ships bound for England.
At one point he sees a little girl board one of the ships. According Chee Chee that
girl looked just like his cousin…the little African girl looked like a monkey.
Wow! Again I was stunned.
To get to England Chee Chee proceeds to dress like a little girl and
easily walks aboard a ship bound for England. No one notices that this is a
monkey and not a little girl! I remember
being incredulous and thinking that this was just wrong, how could a book be so
mean, so wrong. Books were sacred in my house, they were treasures but I knew
this book was actually dangerous. It was the first time I realized the power
that books had.
But I kept reading
In another situation Dr Doolittle concocts a potion to turn
his Black friend Bumpo into a white man to get the friend out of jail…the implications
of that deserve an essay all their own. I later learned that in the next book Bumpo,
still White from the potion, goes on to marry a woman he thinks is White. It
turns out the woman is not White but an Albino. When Doolittle’s potion wears
off the wife learns that Bumpo is actually Black. Both spouses thought they married
“up” in the world (the implication of the book) only to find themselves married
to someone of their own race. Unfortunately,
given the racism and bigotry throughout this series, I don’t think the author
was trying to be ironic but rather sarcastic. (I didn’t read any other books in
that series, nor did I ever tell my parents).
I was reading this book sometime during the late 1960’s,
during the height of civil rights movement.
While my Brooklyn neighborhood was mostly White at the time, it was beginning
to change. And that change was buzzing in the air. White Flight and Housing
Busters were phrases I heard though don’t recall fully understanding them until
I was a quite a bit older. I do remember someone coming to the house and asking
my father if he would be interested in selling the house before
those people took over the
neighborhood.
Housing Busters would
lowball housing prices by playing to the fears of the racist indicating that if
the White family didn’t sell now, they would lose a ton of money when the
neighborhood “turned.”
The same people
would then turn around and sell the house to a Black family at huge increases
over the selling price. My father slammed the door on this guy’s face but then
opened the door and followed him till make sure he left the block. Getting rid of
this guy didn’t keep my neighbors from selling out and heading to the suburbs.
East Flatbush, the neighborhood I grew up in, was
established as a step up for first generation Jewish and Italian
immigrants. Many of the families that established East Flatbush were the
children of immigrant families from Brownsville or East New York tenements. They
were able to flee the poverty conditions of their parents because the American
dream was real in their lives. They could leave apartment life and purchase their own modest home. I, like a several of my friends on
the block had at least one grandparent who spoke Italian. It is easy to be open
minded when issues of race are not in your own back yard, but in fact, the race
of those literally in my back yard at the time was indeed changing. The simple
Christian song with the refrain “Red, Yellow, Black or White, we’re all
precious in His sight…” was sort of an anthem in my grade school, especially during my earliest school years. But again it was an
easy anthem because the minority population was quite small when I was about
eight or nine and we did so passionately believe we all could simply just get along.
The Dr Doolittle series now available to children has been
rewritten and is a sweet children’s story. But it is sad to realize that this iconic
children’s book in its orginal racist form influenced the lives of countless children for more than 50
years before it was redacted.
more in another post...
This year I decided to walk through Lent on Facebook. I
called my FB friends to walk through the 40 days Lent with me by focusing on 40
days of kindness and wonder. We are
called to charitable acts, acts of mercy during Lent, hence the kindness.
Kindness in all forms, especially the most simple. Through FB, I am calling
attention not so much to the act of
kindness but to taking the time to notice when kindness can be offered and do
so. In noticing, I believe I will find that there are many more opportunities for
kindness that I/we would typically not be tuned in to. Not to say that I am a
selfish person but I do know myself well enough to know that sometimes am not
tuned into others and can miss the chance for kindness: the sincere thank you
for good service, letting a car cut in, things along those lines…simple
kindnesses. My hope is that in recognizing that opportunities do abound, that I will
take more of those times and share some kindness which will brighten my life
and the life of whoever is involved. 
