Segregated Charleston and Other Thoughts for Black History Month

Today I met with a handful of female students at Burke High School. They were, as I suspected they would be, a delight. On a purely personal level, it was nice to spend time with young women who were neither the mischievious snarky six year old who lives with me, nor the distracted, jaded twentysomethings I teach.

As part of a program I'm coordinating, we are going to give the girls tote bags filled with all sorts of groovy things, including gift certificates for merchants downtown. The idea is to encourage the Burke kids to come to campus, to hang out on King Street, to feel some ownership of the city. I was reminded (I say reminded because I have been told this at least once a month since I've lived here), however, that historically Calhoun Street divides the peninsula and these kids don't feel welcome or comfortable or compelled to go south of Calhoun.

And that fact just boggles my mind. I grew up in the south. I have no illusions about how race operates in the south. My own hometown of Lafayette, La certainly had black and white neighborhoods and black and white schools. We had a black mall and white mall. Hell, my high school had a black and white prom king and queen. And I understood that this was segregation. I understood how the history of racism had gotten us to this place. But I never once felt limited by that. My individual circumstances are certainly different than most of the kids at Burke. Instead of living in a segregated neighborhood, my family lived in a trailer out in the country. I went to integrated schools until 6th grade and then to predominantly white magnet programs until I graduated. Growing up, I spent an inordinate amount of time on a college campus where my mother was a secretary. Does this account for why I felt no limitations related to race (I felt plenty of limitations related to gender, but that's a story for another day)? Are these kids doomed to always feel like they are on the margins of their own city?

In other news, I saw great documentary on PBS tonight called Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes. It's about the construction of black masculinity perpetuated by contemporary rap and hip hop and was really good and eye-opening. I very much recommend it. It also featured some of my favorite contemporary non-fiction writers. I'm going to post about them tomorrow.