At first glance, compared to West Tech High School, which held close to four thousand students, John Hay was small and shabby. And it came with a security guard at the door who checked our IDs every morning. The ID-checking lasted for a few weeks at the beginning of each year and then was abandoned with a laxness that would be unheard-of now in our post-Columbine world. Then again, it was probably easy to remember twenty white kids in a class of 144.
Inside the classroom, I was back in the majority, as the 13 percent of white students translated into 87 percent of the class through the magic of honors courses. The sorting started early in my school career. In second grade, I was classified into what was called “Major Works,” and promptly started learning French. My friends and I, with the brutality of the young, broke it down to “smart kids” and “dumb kids.” There must have been Major Works in the all-black schools, too, but all through high school my honors classes had a majority of white students.
The only class without an honors section was tenth-grade Black Literature, one of the most miserable experiences I can remember in twelve years of schooling. Not because of the content, which at that time was new to me, but because the teacher usually taught the “dumb kids” so the class read aloud from the book one paragraph at a time. Being a “smart kid” meant I’d never experienced such a thing, nor did I know that some kids read so poorly they counted ahead on the paragraphs so they could practice before their turn. Being as snotty and dismissive as I could get away with, I arrogantly propped novels inside my book during this class, reading anything to distance myself from the reality. This class may be what folks imagine Cleveland public schools are like, but, aside from it, my reality was AP English, honors French, and chemistry. I got a fine education, graduated from college, earned a master’s degree, and am now a contributing member of society like most of the rest of the class of 1983, who became lawyers, teachers, business owners, and professional athletes.
The real education happened outside of class.
Growing up in a working-class, gendered household in the 1970s turned me into a feminist before I knew what to call it. The concept of “women’s work” and “men’s work” was just the tip of the patriarchal iceberg. As a baby feminist, I was highly attuned to sexist behavior and prejudice against women. What I had never paid any attention to was what it was like to be a minority. I had never noticed that my father called black kids “pickaninnies” or that my brother called Puerto Ricans “spics.” I didn’t see other kinds of oppression and discrimination. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
The first week of school I had trouble with a couple of black girls giving me a hard time, making comments under their breath and sucking their teeth at me. I don’t remember what started it or brought it to a head, but back then I wasn’t capable of backing down from a confrontation. Bumping turned into shoving, which turned into books slammed to the floor and then stepping up. Thankfully, the assistant principal magically appeared in that way that they do, shut it down, and pulled me into his office. He listened to my outrage at the unjust and unprovoked attack, and kindly explained to me what had happened. The hard stare and tough attitude that I thought said “Don’t challenge me” was interpreted here as “I challenge you.”
As ignorant as it sounds to be sixteen and not recognize that, this was the first time I glimpsed another culture. At sports events, I became one of two white girls on the black side of the bleachers and suddenly could see the unease, wariness, and race consciousness of the all-white teams.
The shifts in my perspective were slow but steady, and shaped who I am today. Walking around in my white skin, even female white skin, gave me the privilege not to see, not to hear, if I didn’t want to. Now that I knew some black people, I could hear comments like “Wipe that pop can; you don’t know if a black person touched it” for what they were—casual, deeply ingrained prejudice. I started to feel ashamed and embarrassed that my family and neighbors had these racist beliefs. And of myself, that I had never questioned them.
An undisputed benefit of court-ordered busing, among other things, was being given the opportunity to experience what it is like to be in the minority. Just a taste. I would never claim, because of this or any other experience, to know what it’s like to be a minority in Cleveland or anywhere else. I will never live in brown skin and cannot know. What I was given, and what I am grateful for, was the chance to understand how narrow and limited my worldview was before I spent three years crossing the mighty Cuyahoga to attend school.
If I hadn’t been bused, would it have bothered me when my brother sat with a shotgun on his front porch to “keep the black kids off the grass”? An equal-opportunity hater, he hated Jews, spics, niggers, towel heads,
