Just Finished Reading: Some of My Best Friends are Black by Tanner Colby

Colby tells the story of non-integration in the US by following (mostly) his own personal story, and exploring 4 areas where segregation remains rampant: schools, neighborhoods, work and church. His qualifications: be ignorant and white and willing to ask a lot of questions. Plus, publish two books on something completely different (John Belusi and Chris Farley). Here are some of the goods:

Schools
Busing was invented as a way of chasing the white people who fled to the suburbs to avoid integration. Many black schools lost out in this shift, since integration of white students into black schools usually meant erasing and destroying the black history and culture there and also usually didn't work, since the white students left as soon as possible.

Busing pretty quickly came to mean busing black students into white schools, thereby scattering those students from their home communities, but didn't actually lead to an integrated school. Just social segregation inside the schools. In Colby's hometown, it meant an isolated circle of black kids who weren't allowed to be part of afterschool activities, had very big class differences to overcome as well if they wanted to fit in with the white students, and who frequently got shuffled off to remedial classes or even their own internal segregated classes. Tracking, as it turns out, didn't really get invented until their were black kids who needed to be separated out from the rest of the kids.

The choice, then, for black kids in Colby's high school when he was there were 1. Stay isolated in the circle and get a very limited benefit from being at one of the best schools in the state. 2. become really good at making friends with white people. One of his black classmates (out of two) who were able to do this succeeded by: a. using lots of humor to diffuse white discomfort b. "having a really great attitude" c. having a mother (a teacher in the school) who made a conscious choice to have her there for the express purpose of learning the dominant white culture d. a background in her own black history, culture and identity from going to elementary and I think middle school at majority black schools in her home community. She came PREPARED.

These days, with a principal who is very open to talking about race and has a strong historical understanding of it, plus the arrival of a large crop of middle-class black kids, Colby's alma mater is integrated. As in, about half the white kids report being genuinely good friends with at least one black kid. Unlike the rest of White America, where that number is much lower.

Neighborhood

So, I knew about blockbusting before, but I had no idea how direct, pervasive and persistent the "realtors" where who forced it to happen, or how fast they did their work. They would rent out a house on a majority white block to a particular black family that they knew would be bad neighbors. Then, after a couple months, come knocking on white neighbor doors - buying low then selling high to black people coming in. And the knocking can be really persistent - harassment, even, as he describes it. One community fought it off by working really hard and stretching some of the rules. But integration in that neighborhood didn't really happen among the adults - only among the kids.

Unfortunately, I read this in January and didn't have time to finish the summary. It was a really good book, though, and you should totally read it. :)