Quaker-School Conflicts

Fox's student body in 1988 included six blacks, one boy and five girls, in a total student population of fifty. Four of the five African-American girls, plus a brown-skinned Asian-American girl, were inseparable companions and were usually joined at dinner by the black boy. During the meal, the six sat together laughing and having fun. Their apparent cliquishness was seen by some students and even more teachers as a rejection of the school's philosophy of togetherness, although the other easily identifiable student subgroups (brains, punks, and hippies) did not generate much comment. The real issue, clearly, was race. The warm sense of community the African-American students shared among themselves, which had its roots in their difference, seemed to threaten the larger, school-wide community based on sameness.

According to one of the black girls, people often complained that she and her friends were too loud at dinner or left their table in a mess. Three additional black students, also members of her group, had left the school earlier that year. "They were loud," she admitted; "I grant that, they were loud. But the faculty and students have to learn, that's the way they were; you can't change that. I guess it scared people." When asked if things had become more comfortable since the departure of the three "loud" kids, she was quick to answer, "No":

It's quieter now, but . . . they still can't trust us, they still believe we're going to hurt the white kids, hit them, or tell them something bad. That's basically what it comes down to. I guess our group hangs so together, they just can't believe it. . . . The black people in this school are the example, and we're supposed to be perfect. But we can't do that, I'm sorry, but we're not going to do that. And they just aren't going to break us up.

The oldest black girl, a student leader who was not a member of the younger girls' circle, was in the difficult position of seeing two sides to the issue. Asked if anything at the school had been a moral dilemma for her, she answered, "I guess the racism. I see some of the black kids being obnoxious, and I can see how people can be offended by them, and since most people don't feel that way against me I don't know what to do. But I understand why the black kids are upset, although I don't approve of how they are reacting." Sometimes, she added, she didn't know whom she should support, "so often I just don't say

anything." Like the younger black girl, she too felt that being black at Fox meant having to "be better." It "may be ridiculous," she said, "but . . . I can't let them associate ignorance with being black, crying with being black, or stealing. Some of the black students were stealing, but some of the white students were too, and the first people blamed were black. And we feel like saying, 'How dare you blame all the blacks?'"

The whites at Fox would be hurt and angry to hear their resentment of the black students' togetherness labeled racism. They see themselves as wanting racial integration and are disturbed by what they perceive as the blacks' rejection of a Quaker definition of community. There is no doubt, though, that the black kids' style makes some of the whites at Fox uncomfortable, and this is an issue that the school does not seem able to address.

At Dyer, too, relations between black and white students are affected by the clash between the whites' desire for a single community based on sameness and the blacks' need for their own community based on difference. There, however, the greater anger seems to be on the part of white students, many of whom believe that two African-American faculty members, both strong and beloved Dyer authority figures, favor blacks. A couple of black students laughingly and somewhat apologetically mentioned this special bond, and one boy with light skin but African ancestry said he felt excluded because he was not black enough to be part of the black teachers' group. Even those white students who were able to see that the black faculty members had good reason to feel a special attachment and obligation to Dyer's black population were still hurt. "There's a definite segregation of the black students and black faculty from the other students," said a white girl. "The black students are treated by the black faculty as their children—they go out of their way to make them close friends." On Martin Luther King Day, for example, black students were invited to one of the teacher's homes to "celebrate their holiday. And it was very offensive to a lot of students and some faculty, too." The girl struggled to understand what it was that hurt her; she used the words segregation and separation and then said, "I don't know what it is. I guess it's common interests or whatever, but there is a favoritism there, and it's very apparent. . . . I love [the two teachers] very much, the two of them are very strong about being black, and they create a little tension about it, and it bothers me because it's how prejudice gets started."

For this white girl, acknowledging one's blackness, being "strong about it," is threatening to the sense of togetherness in the community; she would be more comfortable if the two black teachers would downplay the issue of race. In spite of the official emphasis on "being oneself" that exists at Dyer and in spite of the apparently very harmonious relations between the school's black and white students, self-conscious blackness is a form of difference that many students and teachers find difficult to understand. A thoughtful white senior tried to analyze why it was disruptive to the community, volunteering the information at the end of an interview. Asked if he had anything to add, he said that he considered one of the black teachers, who was also an administrator, to be "prejudiced." "I'm not a minority, so it's hard for me to say where the line is between being really conscious of racial issues and being prejudiced. But he's the one that's always stressing . . . how we should be a community, and yet he deals with black people differently." The student admitted that maybe he was the one being prejudiced, and he realized that "being black you relate better to black people," but nevertheless it seemed clear to him that the teacher "really wasn't as kind to me as he was to blacks in the class." The real problem, he felt, was that the teacher's special concern for black students wasn't compatible with his role as a Dyer administrator:

It's good for some people to be like that, because it makes everyone more conscious that blacks are separate, and they need to be recognized and they need that identity. But as an administrator who's stressing community, no matter what you really think, you can't let it come out. I know that's not being honest, but as an administrator you have to make sure that what you're doing is for the community. After all, part of community is losing personal ideals.

For many of the white students and teachers at Fox and Dyer, tolerance of difference in the name of community can extend only so far. When it comes to the blacks' pursuit of community through difference, tolerance is all but lost in bewilderment, discomfort, hostility, envy, and hurt. These are stressful matters, which are not talked about openly. Yet only when these tensions and their impact on the schools are discussed will the virtue of community be enriched to accommodate black solidarity. Perhaps when black students at Fox and black teachers at Dyer no longer have to feel defensive about their identification with their fellow African-Americans, they will be able to

abandon some of the vigilant exclusivity that is so painful to many of the whites around them.