Joan Vennochi: Rosa Parks and today's white youth
BEFORE RUSHING off to school, my seventh-grade daughter sat at the breakfast table scanning a newspaper story about Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon who died at age 92.
"Did you know who she was?" I asked. "Oh, Mom, what do you think?" she replied, a pre-teen's too-cool-for-you way of saying "yes."
Anna told me she learned about Parks at school, during "that holiday for black people" — which turned out to be not Kwanzaa, but Black History Month (February). "You should write about her," she said, "because, you know, there is still segregation."
Do you mean that black and white people don't live in the same neighborhoods and don't hang out together? I asked. "Yeah, write about that," she said.
This unexpected morning conversation proves that white suburban school children do learn about the contributions of courageous Americans like Rosa Parks. However, they learn about them in a bubble of time and space — within the context of a specific month, and often in schools with zero or few nonwhite classmates.
And it doesn't seem like that reality will change anytime soon. The de facto segregation of suburban America is stark and persistent. It prevails, even while white suburban teenagers enthusiastically borrow some aspects of urban black culture. Hip-hop music pulses from Volvo station wagons en route to soccer games. Everyone wears low-riding baggy jeans, and Beyoncé is a household word. Driving a carload of teenagers to the beach last summer, even some moms could rap along with Lil' Rob — "Summer days just sitting around, but when the sun goes down, I'll be ready to party."
Lots of white kids believe it's cool to be black — only they don't know any black people. They know what they see on television, whether it is ESPN, MTV, or reruns of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." Their affect of black culture is also conveniently temporary; it can be shed whenever they or their parents are ready to move onto the next phase of their lives — high school graduation and college entrance exams and admissions interviews.
For those young people who watch the news, Hurricane Katrina also brought black faces onto their wide-screen TVs. But if that level of poverty shocks adults, it is incomprehensible to the average white suburban teenager. Their schools will run Katrina relief drives, and then it is onto the next headliner cause....
Even though black athletes and entertainers greatly influence today's youth culture, actual contact with black peers is little different from their baby boomer parents' contact at that same age. We lived through the civil rights movement; to our children, it is a chapter in American history. But black and white children in America today still grow up in worlds that are more separate than shared.
Of course, that does not diminish what Parks accomplished when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. That act of bravery and defiance on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 inspired a movement that eventually ended officially sanctioned segregation in America. Changing the law of the land was not easy. If Rosa Parks is the acknowledged mother of the civil rights movement, it took many more like her who were willing to protest and, if necessary, die.
But tough as it was to change the law, changing the habits, attitudes, and comfort level between the races is proving to be even tougher. The country has learned that you can outlaw segregation, but you cannot force integration or even friendship....
"Did you know who she was?" I asked. "Oh, Mom, what do you think?" she replied, a pre-teen's too-cool-for-you way of saying "yes."
Anna told me she learned about Parks at school, during "that holiday for black people" — which turned out to be not Kwanzaa, but Black History Month (February). "You should write about her," she said, "because, you know, there is still segregation."
Do you mean that black and white people don't live in the same neighborhoods and don't hang out together? I asked. "Yeah, write about that," she said.
This unexpected morning conversation proves that white suburban school children do learn about the contributions of courageous Americans like Rosa Parks. However, they learn about them in a bubble of time and space — within the context of a specific month, and often in schools with zero or few nonwhite classmates.
And it doesn't seem like that reality will change anytime soon. The de facto segregation of suburban America is stark and persistent. It prevails, even while white suburban teenagers enthusiastically borrow some aspects of urban black culture. Hip-hop music pulses from Volvo station wagons en route to soccer games. Everyone wears low-riding baggy jeans, and Beyoncé is a household word. Driving a carload of teenagers to the beach last summer, even some moms could rap along with Lil' Rob — "Summer days just sitting around, but when the sun goes down, I'll be ready to party."
Lots of white kids believe it's cool to be black — only they don't know any black people. They know what they see on television, whether it is ESPN, MTV, or reruns of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." Their affect of black culture is also conveniently temporary; it can be shed whenever they or their parents are ready to move onto the next phase of their lives — high school graduation and college entrance exams and admissions interviews.
For those young people who watch the news, Hurricane Katrina also brought black faces onto their wide-screen TVs. But if that level of poverty shocks adults, it is incomprehensible to the average white suburban teenager. Their schools will run Katrina relief drives, and then it is onto the next headliner cause....
Even though black athletes and entertainers greatly influence today's youth culture, actual contact with black peers is little different from their baby boomer parents' contact at that same age. We lived through the civil rights movement; to our children, it is a chapter in American history. But black and white children in America today still grow up in worlds that are more separate than shared.
Of course, that does not diminish what Parks accomplished when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. That act of bravery and defiance on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 inspired a movement that eventually ended officially sanctioned segregation in America. Changing the law of the land was not easy. If Rosa Parks is the acknowledged mother of the civil rights movement, it took many more like her who were willing to protest and, if necessary, die.
But tough as it was to change the law, changing the habits, attitudes, and comfort level between the races is proving to be even tougher. The country has learned that you can outlaw segregation, but you cannot force integration or even friendship....