Last month, I attended the first annual pre-writing conference for Louder Than a Bomb, Kansas City. My small learning group from GKCWP planned this during the summer and then actually carried it through. It was a little scary and honestly, Paul Richardson from Washington HS did most of the work, but I did my part. We had 32 kids from all over the metro show up to talk about social justice. Primarily the racial divide in KC, MO engineered by developer J.C. Nichols that included restricted convenants designed to keep his new developments white. We took a bus tour of those areas of development and the differences were reflected in architecture, upkeep and businesses offered. It was striking to see. After we returned from the bus tour, students (and adults) were given time to write in reaction to what they'd seen and read about (an excerpt from Tanner Colby's book Some of My Best Friends are Black). The following is what I came up with:
My white world was buried in potatoes
Rocky Mountain high and Wonder Bread
in all the glorious shades of white;
ecru, beige, ivory and milk.
Wonder Bread peanut butter sandwiches with no crusts
because my mother cut them off for us
as we ate around the table
at six p.m. every night; my father saying grace.
My white world was religion if you count
Nazarine and Mormon.
Missionary pairs striding streets with purpose
in stiff new suits on shiny new bicycles.
Glossy blond and brunette heads leaning together
to share with you the WORD so they could go to
heaven with their seven wives
who’d be pregnant forever.
Northwest Nazarine College, where I walked the
graduation stage and knew nothing more about
them except that they were all white like me.
My white world was high school football on a Friday night,
homecoming dances with a live band
wood shop, home ec, drama, jazz band, art club
All of us bouncing off each other like billiard balls,
making short, sharp connections and
returning quickly to our assigned corners
where we waited for instruction and gossiped
with each other about each other and
all the gossip sounded the same.
My white world was a microcosm of snowflakes.
No two alike, but all from the same sky on the same night
and up in the mountains the neo-Nazis shaved their
heads and howled at the moon and did whatever they did
and we did not hear them. Or pretended not to.
They were not part of my white-bread world.
They were the crusts my mother cut off
of the peanut butter sandwiches we ate around
the dinner table at exactly six pm.
My white world was moved 500 miles and suddenly
shaded with off-white, tan, chocolate, almond, mocha
which at first were sipped, slowly and carefully.
Fear and wonder mixed at all that had been missed.
I had not realized that Wonder Bread was not the
ONLY bread and that sometimes the best part
is the crusts my mother used to cut off.
