A Step Backwards

By Marsh Cassady

I find it extremely difficult to believe that the people of Nebraska agreed to approve a law such as the one passed two weeks ago. Further, I find it hard to believe that the driving force behind the passage of the law is a man named Ernie Chambers, Nebraska’s only black state senator.

What is this law? “It calls for dividing the Omaha public schools into three racially identifiable districts, one largely black, one white and one mostly Hispanic.” (New York Times, April 14). According to various newspaper stories, the law has created an uproar with many people calling the issue “state-sponsored segregation.”

Supposedly, the idea, as advanced by Chambers, was based on blacks wanting to control a district where their children are a majority. But why? Certainly, there need to be changes in public schools. Many still de-emphasize the contributions of blacks or Hispanics or Native Americans, for instance, to history and literature, to science and the arts. This is why many colleges and universities have such departments as black studies or Chicano studies. But, for the most part, the schools themselves are integrated.

Once when I was teaching part-time at Seton Hall University, one of my students complained that nobody recognized him as Korean. They thought he was Japanese or Chinese, perhaps. My thought then and now is: Why is it important to be seen as different from the majority, at least so far as background over which a person has no control?

I am not so-called “color” blind; nobody is, in the sense of not seeing whites and blacks and Asians, as looking somewhat different from each other. But why should these differences matter? And why should a person’s skin coloring have anything to do with whether he or she is isolated from others. The freedom marches and the whole Civil Rights movement brought about to what was. Now there is a trend to go backwards again, and I do not like it. Omaha is only one example. Schools in other areas are following the same trend, though not usually law-enforced. I have a friend who taught at a high school in Los Angeles that was only for gay and lesbian kids. I also read about a private school in that area that enrolls only black students.

I don’t like this! Yes, I can understand some need for it. Gay kids, in particular, may face a rough road in a regular public high school. But this should not be! Voters and school administrators and legislators need to work to solve problems, rather than to point them up by establishing different schools, based supposedly on racial background or sexual orientation. This sort of thing only points up the fact that your group is different from mine, and pointing up of differences drives wedges between people. It splits them apart.

I keep thinking: What if I lived in Omaha and my kids were still in school? Which one would they attend. My three youngest kids are bi-racial. Who has the right to say they’ll go to the “white” school or the “black” school!

When the kids and I moved to San Diego in 1980, my daughter Beth wanted to be able to attend the San Diego school for the performing arts. As a young girl, she’d acted in summer stock, playing the lead children’s part in a summer-long show. But no! We were told that since she has “black” blood, she is classified as black (which hearkens back to pre-Civil war days in the U.S.!). The performing arts school, at that time, was located in a predominately black community. So in a form of reverse racial discrimination, Beth was told she couldn’t go there because the school needed to be balanced with other races!

I friend who was here for a week’s visit the first part of April has lived and worked in many different countries. While in most of these countries she adopted a child. Her kids come from many different races. Would she have wanted each of them to attend a different school! I’m sure not.

I’ve often told the following story: Six or seven years ago I went into a store here in Rosarito to buy some Christmas gifts to send to my kids. I was chatting with the clerk there, a young Mexican woman. She asked me if I lived in one of the communities outside of town. No, I live in Rosarito, I told her.

“In one of the gated communities here?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I rent an apartment not far from here.”
“What street?” she asked.
“Calzada a la Playa.”
“But don’t mostly Mexicans live on that street?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I suppose so.”
“And you want to live among all those Mexicans?”

I was astounded. But maybe she she felt that gringos in general want to live by themselves...as evidenced by such ethnic groupings as Germantowns, Japantowns, Chinatowns, etc., in large cities.

I don’t like this sort of isolation. Again, I can understand that people who don’t speak a particular language or who don’t understand the culture of their new country want to be among familiar people and things. But then it’s time to assimilate, to let go. I wrote a book called The Diversity of American Theatre. I talked about the contributions of various ethnic, racial, and other minority groups to what our integrated theatre of today has become. These contributions are important. But more important is that overall these various elements improved overall American theatre, just as the input and contributions of all minorities to a particular country or culture are important.

It is not good to isolate these elements or contributions and put them into a little racial or ethnic box. Chambers himself is working in the wider field of state politics. Why then try to push his children or others’ children into little boxes from which it can be hard to escape.

Shame on Omaha! Shame on the state legislature, and shame on State Senator Ernie Chambers.