Reflections on a Police Ride Along
Thursday, August 28, 2008.
Along with about 20 other Kirkwood area ministers, I have joined the chaplain program sponsored by the Kirkwood Police Department. I have a pocket badge, and an ID. I understand we are going to get jackets later on.
As part of the program, the ministers go on ride-a-longs. I understand I was the 2nd one to do so. Below is an account of how the day went. Enjoy!
Thursday morning, 6:45 am, roll call. A half dozen police sitting around. The lieutenant recaps a little of what is going on. There is some light joking.
I am assigned to two different officers for different parts of the 8 hour shift that runs from 7 am to 3 pm.
One officer mainly drives me around and shows me where our US Senator, Claire MaCaskill's compound is in Kirkwood, plus the homes of a few TV announcers. He has also been investigating the theft of a parishioners purse during a Room At The Inn night at Eliot. He has been living in Kirkwood and serving on our police force for 38 ½ years. He has seen it all. I don’t really want to know what ‘it’ is, actually.
We get a call from the dispatcher. A woman is complaining about difficulty breathing. When we arrive, there is an ambulance and a fire truck. We enter the woman’s home. Inside there are about 7 people. The old woman is complaining about difficulty breathing, but she seems fine to me. She is not getting along with her equally aged husband. A neighbor is in the room. He agrees to hang out with the husband until another relative shows up. One of the men in the room confides to me that he thinks the old woman is fed up with caring for her husband and just needs a couple days away at Missouri Baptist. It is really hard to be old and feeble yourself and have to take care of a crotchety spouse at the same time.
When I inquire as to why so many emergency responders are here in this woman’s house, this is how it is explained to me. The woman called, 911, so an ambulance came. When an ambulance comes, usually a fire truck comes, too, because they don’t know how many people they will actually need. When the fire truck comes, the police now come, too. Why? Because not that long ago, a man in Maplewood set fire to his truck, and when the firemen came to put out the fire, he shot and killed the fireman. So, now the police go on fire calls too.
Otherwise we drive around the high school a few times making sure the high schoolers are getting to school. We turn on the radar gun a few times riding around town– it checks car speeds while we are moving and it checks ahead and behind our police car.
We give out a couple of parking tickets to outrageously and dangerously parked cars. We pull over an old guy in a pickup truck, which is heavily laden with old pallets. Apparently, he drives around town, picks up the pallets from loading docks, and then goes and sells them somewhere. That’s not the problem. It’s that he has no tail lights or brake light. So, the officer tells him that she could have the truck towed, since it is illegal to drive, but she will just give him a ticket and tell him to get the lights fixed.
When the officer calls the car’s license plate in, they can tell us what kind of car it is supposed to be, the address it is registered to, and the date of its registration sticker.
At one point, the air conditioning breaks down. It is about 90 degrees out. The police officers wear tight fitting ballistic vests, along with tee shirts and their uniform. It gets them pretty hot. So the a/c is pretty important. And they often keep their driver’s side window down to hear better for better situational awareness. So, we take the car into the depot, and they test it, fix something, send us back out. Later in the day, it happens again, so we get a ‘new’ car. These cars are not in the best of shape. They are running pretty much constantly– 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are always 5 of them out on the streets of Kirkwood. The officers patrol in zones, so they cover a lot of the same ground.
The dispatcher comes on line to tell us a woman has called 911 several times. All they can hear is her telling someone to stop what they are doing and the woman is saying to this person they should go into a mental institution. And the woman hangs up. Several times. They can target a cell phone to a certain range, but not pinpoint. We drive over to where the call was to have originated. We drive around slowly, looking around, listening. The cell phone call could have come from inside a house. The woman is not answering her cell phone now. Who knows? We don’t find anything. We drive on. Later on, they get through to the woman. It was just an argument about something. Nothing serious.
I remind the officer about lunch. This is about one o’clock. Two hours to go on the shift. We go to Subway, sit down to eat. I get three bites in, and we get a call on the radio. A truck has crashed into a tree on North Taylor street. That is in our zone. Just like on TV, we quickly stash our lunch in the plastic bags, and jog out to the patrol car.
I’m wondering if it is going to be a grisly scene. If there will be an opportunity to offer pastoral care or a prayer to a stranger. I’m a chaplain after all. The adrenaline begins to pump a little bit.
We hop in, maneuver over to Taylor, and with our light on and siren whooping, we quickly get in behind a fire truck and an ambulance. They got the call too. We are going about 40 miles an hour up Taylor toward Manchester. We are zooming through stop signs, people are pulled over for us. First in line is the fire truck, then the ambulance, and then us, the police car. And I’m riding shot gun. Whooee!
When we get there, we don’t see anything. Some guys mowing lawns tell us there was a panel truck that crashed into a tree over there– they point– and the truck took off again. We look around and can see where the truck hit the tree. There are small bits of truck and a huge gouge. We drive around the block but the panel truck is long gone. Finally, the fire truck and ambulance head back to their station.
We drive and talk a bit more. We get a call about a suspicious character on North Taylor street: an African American youth with a red Mohawk haircut. Well, he shouldn’t be hard to spot. And we spot him. He seems like an ordinary youth. But he is black. With a red Mohawk, and he is seated on a curb scratching his leg. The officer asks if he is hurt or anything. He says, no, he is just scratching his leg. She waves and we drive off. She happens to know who he is, and that the youth is out on bond for some offense, and she knows he isn’t wanted for anything.
So the gist of it is that a neighbor sees a black youth with a red Mohawk haircut walking down the street, and that automatically makes him a suspicious character, and it is good to call the police in on such situations, right? Because North Taylor doesn’t have black people, and black people– especially youth, and especially a youth with a red Mohawk– how much more suspicious can you get? But this is profiling, it is racist. And the police get calls like this all the time. Calls about the neighbors leaves blowing on to your yard. Calls about rescuing a lost cat, dog.
We end our day by driving to a few houses in Kirkwood and handing out packs of 20 flyers to neighborhood block captains. The flyers are about a Take Back the Night event coming up later next month. It is community policing. I think next time, I’ll do a half shift, because 8 hours is pretty grueling. And I’ll go later in the day. They tell me more is going on then. The bad guys don’t get up early in the morning. Most shoplifting and other crime happens after 2 pm.
Well, you can learn a lot about how people view the police by riding with them in their cars. Some people smile and wave, others look suspiciously at the officers, as if the police are already guilty of something. But the ones I met are caring people with a tough job to do.
Friday, September 12, 2008
September Board Report
Lead Minister’s Report to the Board of Trustees
September 12, 2008
My goals have been to: (1) Assure worship services are meaningful and challenging; (2) Administer Chapel business (including staff); (3) regular social & pastoral contact.
Worship Services
Sunday Services. I preached twice last month, and I am set to preach three times in September, with Rev. Bonnie preaching on 9/21. I will be preaching in Mt Vernon, IL that day. I am still working on getting the rest of the fall scheduled. Last Sunday service produced several dozen responses to the question: when did you first know you were white? I have been able to use transcription software to get all those handwritten notes into electronic form. While I won’t be able to use all of the responses in the upcoming sermon, I will post them all on my blog: http://revdanielsblog.blogspot.com.
Chapel Business
Adult religious education. This month I began teaching a four session class called, “articulating your theology.” It will meet for four Wednesday night, and participants will produce a short statement about Unitarian universalism and their religious beliefs.
Board Stewardship Committee. I participated in this meeting. We discussed raising the pledge base, cultivating large gifts, expanding the script program, and moving Eliot more fully into e-commerce. Charlie Lewis and I are making progress in this area. Bill Miller and I meeting later this month to discuss the same topics.
Bookkeeper. Our bookkeeper is back on the job and doing well.
Building and Grounds. I called a meeting to try and get everyone on the same page as far as our grounds keeping and landscape plan goes. Besides myself, Marge Bergfeld (an Eliot member who owns a landscaping business), Charlie Lewis (Office Manager), Karen Rose (Eliot’s landscape contractor) attended, along with Larry Reuter and Curtis Kristofitz of the Building and Grounds (B&G) Committee. There has been some tension as the guys from B&G have been denied access to work orders, invoices, and even contact with Karen Rose by the previous Business Administrator. We discussed the work Ms Rose was doing, had done, her general plan and approach to the grounds. Larry & Curtis had a variety of saved up, pointed questions, which were answered satisfactorily. Marge Bergfeld was able to provide a professional perspective that was most helpful. Our group toured the grounds and made on the spot decisions about particular plants. Charlie will come up with a proposed annual calendar and grounds plan which we will then take back to the group. There is some tension between ‘old school’ and ‘new school’ of thought here. The old school apparently thinks there should be as few plants as possible with as much lawn grass as possible. The new school favors more native plants with reduced water, chemical, and maintenance inputs.
Canvass. The staff and I are eager to begin to work with the new canvass team. Hopefully we will receive some information soon.
Chapel Calendar. We have been making tweaks to the online CalendarWiz program we use for our calendaring. It is working well, and is available as a link from our new web site.
Disaster Preparedness. I distributed kits for families for disaster preparedness last Sunday, as part of the Sunday service. I also asked for volunteers for a Disaster Preparedness Task Force. I have since received about a half dozen inquiries. I plan to convene the group in two weeks, after returning from Boston. I also convened a telephone conference call among ministers from large UU churches in our district. We discussed what we were doing (if anything) and best practices.
Membership Coordinator. After an extensive interview, I have brought on Tracey Howe Koch as “Volunteer Membership Coordinator.” This is essentially, a staff position, but unpaid for this year. Tracey will work with me initially, and then I plan on handing off the membership area to Rev. Bonnie, due to the civic activity I have taken up in Kirkwood.
Our Neighbors. Our lawyer for the property line dispute has advised us to get another survey done to see if our neighbor has complied with the court order. Charlie is working on facilitating this. Our lawyer has been on vacation, but I will be communicating with him regarding the sign posted on the neighbor’s RV. It continues to be an eyesore.
Information guide. We are in the process of a total overhaul of the information guide. Previously, all of the religious education material was published in separate booklets and pamphlets. While some material for RE will still be published separately, the new information guide will be a comprehensive resource for all the activities and programs of Eliot Unitarian Chapel.
Web Site. The board let me know last spring that a more functional web site was a priority. Brent Vaughn and Charlie Lewis have been working tirelessly to get this up and running. They have even installed a major upgrade of the software. I have been doing some testing and updating.
Social & Pastoral contact
Community for Understanding and Healing. I participated in the last meeting where we saw a short video on white privilege and then broke out into discussion groups. I will continue to participate in that group as part of my plan to be active in the civic life of Kirkwood.
Pastoral Activities. I had two office visits, and a phone call, along with the usual coffee hour discussions. I plan on two in home visits in the next month.
Picnic at Des Peres Park. We had an Eliot picnic at Des Peres Park (8/24). Bonnie, and I and our girls spent a couple hours there with parishioners in a relaxed environment.
Police Chaplain program. I have been in several meetings at the police department with other Kirkwood area ministers to discuss and implement the chaplain program. I took my “ride-a-long” in an 8 hour shift. It was illuminating. You can read more about the ride along on my blog which is at: http://revdanielsblog.blogspot.com. I plan on doing this about once per month as a way of meeting more neighbors and interacting with our public officials.
Upcoming.
I will be in Boston from September 14 through the 17th for a UUA task force.
On September 18 I will be introduced with the chaplain team to the Kirkwood city Council.
On September 19 and 20th I will be in Chicago for a district board meeting.
On September 21 I will be preaching in Mount Vernon, Illinois, and Rev. Bonnie will be doing the service here.
September 12, 2008
My goals have been to: (1) Assure worship services are meaningful and challenging; (2) Administer Chapel business (including staff); (3) regular social & pastoral contact.
Worship Services
Sunday Services. I preached twice last month, and I am set to preach three times in September, with Rev. Bonnie preaching on 9/21. I will be preaching in Mt Vernon, IL that day. I am still working on getting the rest of the fall scheduled. Last Sunday service produced several dozen responses to the question: when did you first know you were white? I have been able to use transcription software to get all those handwritten notes into electronic form. While I won’t be able to use all of the responses in the upcoming sermon, I will post them all on my blog: http://revdanielsblog.blogspot.com.
Chapel Business
Adult religious education. This month I began teaching a four session class called, “articulating your theology.” It will meet for four Wednesday night, and participants will produce a short statement about Unitarian universalism and their religious beliefs.
Board Stewardship Committee. I participated in this meeting. We discussed raising the pledge base, cultivating large gifts, expanding the script program, and moving Eliot more fully into e-commerce. Charlie Lewis and I are making progress in this area. Bill Miller and I meeting later this month to discuss the same topics.
Bookkeeper. Our bookkeeper is back on the job and doing well.
Building and Grounds. I called a meeting to try and get everyone on the same page as far as our grounds keeping and landscape plan goes. Besides myself, Marge Bergfeld (an Eliot member who owns a landscaping business), Charlie Lewis (Office Manager), Karen Rose (Eliot’s landscape contractor) attended, along with Larry Reuter and Curtis Kristofitz of the Building and Grounds (B&G) Committee. There has been some tension as the guys from B&G have been denied access to work orders, invoices, and even contact with Karen Rose by the previous Business Administrator. We discussed the work Ms Rose was doing, had done, her general plan and approach to the grounds. Larry & Curtis had a variety of saved up, pointed questions, which were answered satisfactorily. Marge Bergfeld was able to provide a professional perspective that was most helpful. Our group toured the grounds and made on the spot decisions about particular plants. Charlie will come up with a proposed annual calendar and grounds plan which we will then take back to the group. There is some tension between ‘old school’ and ‘new school’ of thought here. The old school apparently thinks there should be as few plants as possible with as much lawn grass as possible. The new school favors more native plants with reduced water, chemical, and maintenance inputs.
Canvass. The staff and I are eager to begin to work with the new canvass team. Hopefully we will receive some information soon.
Chapel Calendar. We have been making tweaks to the online CalendarWiz program we use for our calendaring. It is working well, and is available as a link from our new web site.
Disaster Preparedness. I distributed kits for families for disaster preparedness last Sunday, as part of the Sunday service. I also asked for volunteers for a Disaster Preparedness Task Force. I have since received about a half dozen inquiries. I plan to convene the group in two weeks, after returning from Boston. I also convened a telephone conference call among ministers from large UU churches in our district. We discussed what we were doing (if anything) and best practices.
Membership Coordinator. After an extensive interview, I have brought on Tracey Howe Koch as “Volunteer Membership Coordinator.” This is essentially, a staff position, but unpaid for this year. Tracey will work with me initially, and then I plan on handing off the membership area to Rev. Bonnie, due to the civic activity I have taken up in Kirkwood.
Our Neighbors. Our lawyer for the property line dispute has advised us to get another survey done to see if our neighbor has complied with the court order. Charlie is working on facilitating this. Our lawyer has been on vacation, but I will be communicating with him regarding the sign posted on the neighbor’s RV. It continues to be an eyesore.
Information guide. We are in the process of a total overhaul of the information guide. Previously, all of the religious education material was published in separate booklets and pamphlets. While some material for RE will still be published separately, the new information guide will be a comprehensive resource for all the activities and programs of Eliot Unitarian Chapel.
Web Site. The board let me know last spring that a more functional web site was a priority. Brent Vaughn and Charlie Lewis have been working tirelessly to get this up and running. They have even installed a major upgrade of the software. I have been doing some testing and updating.
Social & Pastoral contact
Community for Understanding and Healing. I participated in the last meeting where we saw a short video on white privilege and then broke out into discussion groups. I will continue to participate in that group as part of my plan to be active in the civic life of Kirkwood.
Pastoral Activities. I had two office visits, and a phone call, along with the usual coffee hour discussions. I plan on two in home visits in the next month.
Picnic at Des Peres Park. We had an Eliot picnic at Des Peres Park (8/24). Bonnie, and I and our girls spent a couple hours there with parishioners in a relaxed environment.
Police Chaplain program. I have been in several meetings at the police department with other Kirkwood area ministers to discuss and implement the chaplain program. I took my “ride-a-long” in an 8 hour shift. It was illuminating. You can read more about the ride along on my blog which is at: http://revdanielsblog.blogspot.com. I plan on doing this about once per month as a way of meeting more neighbors and interacting with our public officials.
Upcoming.
I will be in Boston from September 14 through the 17th for a UUA task force.
On September 18 I will be introduced with the chaplain team to the Kirkwood city Council.
On September 19 and 20th I will be in Chicago for a district board meeting.
On September 21 I will be preaching in Mount Vernon, Illinois, and Rev. Bonnie will be doing the service here.
When did you first know you were “white?”
When did you first know you were “white?”
25 People answered the question. Below is a transcription of their handwritten notes. Each story is separated by a blank line.
As a youngster I grew up in a community of mostly white people except for a neighborhood called “Hershey Hill.” When we passed through this area, my mom would tell us to lock our car door, and we did. I noticed that the porches and front yards of these homes were filled with people with brown skin and as I grew older, equated this with the chocolate candy for which the neighborhood was so named. How clever, I thought.
At eight years of age, my dad coached my basketball team and we gave rides to a girl who lived in Hershey Hill. One evening I asked her if she was scared to live in Hershey Hill. She cried, my dad got mad at me and I suddenly realized the thoughtless prejudice of my family.
When I first went to Nipher junior high with kids from the Meacham Park area, I was taken aback by the dark skin and loud, aggressive behavior of the black kids. It took me most of high school to stop being startled by both of these aspects.
My first memories were living on a military base in Germany. We had lived on and off base, so I knew we were Americans and not Germans. In the states, from second grade on, I lived several years in Lincoln, Nebraska. At some point we heard about Omaha having problems but I probably didn’t realize those problems may have been a result of being poor and black until high school. However, we did have a handful of black families all accepted as part of our community. In grade school the immigrant kids seemed more exotic and different than the black kids. The kid’s parents spoke Lativan and the girl with a really long braids had a funny name. They were different.
The three black kids in our high school were just kids. It didn’t seem like they were different. I didn’t really know about problems until I was out of high school. Lincoln was a lot different from Omaha and way different from St. Louis. Now I know there are a lot of black kids at another high school in Lincoln and racial tensions were not unknown. It was just not something my family had to deal with. However it is possible that her family’s choice of high school may have been based partly on race. What we were told was that it was because my brother wanted to be on the debate team.
I grew up in a country that was 99% white and 95% one religion. Sometime around 10 years of age, I was at an amusement park, where they had rides and so on. In one corner they had some shows, singing and so on. One little closed area had inside an exotic “jungle” show. A featured part was a black person, presumably African, who was dressed in a grass skirt holding a spear. He walked on hot coals and broken glass. He said not a word and an emcee narrated. I thought of Tarzan books. It was obviously cool. These exotic people lived in a land far away. Among us white people lived a small number of gypsies, the only minority that were different already by the way they dressed.
We had a sort of passive religion, a religion weren’t mostly in school. Religion was not a major part of ethnic identity, at least not in childhood. Language was a major barrier between “us” and “them.”
I then had to become “them.” though still part of white people! In my 13th year I was in an urban Chicago school and did have one black friend, one of the handful of black kids in the school. I had trouble understanding several kids, they spoke poorly. My black friends spoke perfect Midwest English.
By the time I was a toddler, I knew “white” was considered superior, or preferable, to “black,” but because of an early memory of a friendly black man, I could not figure out why.
When I was six or seven years old my father, a social worker in Kansas City was helping us with bailing people out of jail during the riots following King’s assassination. Late one night he came home tired and frustrated and it was the first and only time I saw him cry. This was a monumental in my thinking about the divide that existed between the races and I definitely knew I was white.
I was 2 ½ years old when I first knew I was white. We had a black cleaning lady once a week.
When we were driving downtown and my father pointed out the ‘ziggaboos’ and I saw chocolate colored people. But somehow I knew he was wrong to call them that. So from an early age – five? – I knew my father and I had different beliefs.
Growing up in Edwardsville, Illinois and going to Catholic school, I had no exposure to any ethnic city other than Caucasians and primarily Catholics. I do remember an African American – although I did not know that term – called “preach” who walked the streets of downtown and ran errands for merchants and lawyers from the county courthouse. He was extremely friendly and well liked by the community. I had a sense that I was different from preach in many ways. Skin color was just one of those ways.
I first knew I was white at age 12, in 1964, in downtown St. Louis. A black man saved my life. Obviously, he was a good person. The only difference between us was the color of our skin.
Somewhere around six or seven years old I learned I was white when my father worked with the Mill Hill missionary fathers were coming and going between Africa and St. Louis and England. As Catholics we work for the poor who always seemed to be black. Living in the city of St. Louis my other experienced was a racist grandfather who – for as long as I can remember – talked about the “niggers” who we saw around us. Then in seventh grade we move toward integrated neighborhood which I loved. It was always confusing until then. Now I am struggling with the “whiteness” in many ways of our congregation. It just doesn’t feel like home. I wish I had suggestions...
My first recollection was when I was around 10 years old walking up to town in Sparta, Illinois where my grandma and grandpa lived. I was with my sister who was 11. Two girls of color approached us and we all exchanged looks and remarks, thus I knew that I was white and they were black.
When I was growing up in Kirkwood I only saw white people. I don’t remember seeing many people with dark skin until TV, and I went to college at a SIU in Carbondale.
I grew up in a town and state that had very few minorities. However, in second or third grade, I became friends with an African American girl named Laverne. My mom and I would go to her house (in a “bad” part of town) and bring her back to our house so we could play together. I was fortunate to have parents who didn’t see people as black or white.
When I was a child, age 5 to 12, I lived in a small town of block from the county courthouse. Our next-door neighbors on both sides were “rich,” business owners in town whose homes were brick. We rented a white framed two-story house from one of them. The other had children my age, my only playmates. They also had a black maid, whom I noticed a dark skin, but I never saw any other discrimination. A block away lived a black family you the mother was renowned for her barbecue, which another neighbor used to buy and take home. I don’t remember any other contact with black people except the black AME small white framed church, which was right next door to our big Zion UCC church uptown, only a couple of blocks on the other side of the courthouse.
I went to church camp in the late 1950s, early 1960s, and met kids from Fort Smith, Arkansas. The civil rights movement and the lunch counter demonstrations across the South came in to my consciousness. The kids I met at Camp became penpals, and I learned there older college aged siblings were participating in the protests. The music at church camp that we didn’t like was due up – early rock ‘n roll – so I joined with three or four black kids and started an a cappella to a group that sang at Camp Aurora and Windyville, Missouri.
After college in a few years at Monsanto – when they started hiring blacks – I met the best friend I had there for over 25 years I’ve been retired six years now, and we still get together for dinner several times a year – recently to celebrate Obama’s nomination.
I still find “white” and “Caucasian” we are words to describe myself. I’m German through and through, but intellectually I know that race as such doesn’t exist scientifically. It’s a weird world and getting weirder the longer I live!
I think I knew I was white when I knew black people were not “allowed” in our neighborhood or schools in 1945. “They” had their own neighborhoods and their houses were not nice – they didn’t keep them up. Then I didn’t think more about it – until I was old enough to see the injustice. I began to imagine what it must be like to be another race. I had to deal with fear also. I was afraid of black people. I stayed clear.
Of course that changed you I’m still afraid of hatred no matter where it comes from – and uncomfortable sometimes. But, I have found love and appreciation. I also see progress.
My parents talked about the Negroes. It seems difficult to say the word... we were driving they talked in general – they did not point. But I could see and feel the difference. I could feel a difference because of the way my dad said the word: Negro.
I graduated in January 1955. And I knew that the schools would be integrated in February 1955. I first realized that it wasn’t because no “Negroes” lived in my school district and that none came to my school – I was shocked to learn that they were not allowed to come to school. P.S. I. thought of myself as “Italian” but then new I was “white.”
There was a woman my grandmother called “the maid.” My grandfather called her “the colored gal.” Tinnie and I loved each other, or at least I loved her and she was very, very kind to me. The first time I realized we were different colors I at least had the sense to feel guilty. My grandma and I had lunch at the kitchen table and Tinnie said on a stool at the counter. I asked me to come sit with us. But my grandmother said, oh no, she preferred to sit at the counter. Tinnie did not smile at me, concentrated on her lunch, and I knew it wasn’t the truth. I knew that she was somehow considered inferior, and I felt very bad about that I felt bad because I loved her. Incidentally, my grandmother always was polite and considerate of her employees and unfailingly went through the annual struggle of paying Social Security on their behalf.
I grew up in Hungary (100% Caucasian population) and the first time I realized I was white was when I saw black students in my biology class at the local university.
I grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois. Quite a while ago now. About that time I was in kindergarten, my mother told me that I should not talk to the “dark” people on the buses, which we regularly rode around town. She said their skin was dark because they were bad and we were very lucky because our skin was white. I can remember thinking two things: (one) that the dark people were different shades and (two) I wasn’t white like milk or my white crayons, but I knew if I said these things, I would be “in trouble are you” shortly after this, I was watching a “arc” mother on the bus with her children and she was very good to them and I thought my mother was wrong or she had lied to me.
This is something that happened with my twin boys when they were four years old. Their best friend was a black boy from preschool. It was early summer and we had invited him over to play. I told the boys that could change into their swim trunks before getting into a little wading pool in the backyard. A few minutes later, my boys came running out of the bedroom and one of them said excitedly, “mommy, mommy, guess what! Vernon’s black all over.”
They had obviously thought previously that only his face and hands were black (the visible parts). I’ve always loved this memory.
I grew up in Chicago and when Martin Luther King was assassinated, there were terrible riots in the city. I particularly remember because it happened the day before my birthday, and the police were telling people not to come down into the city until the streets were under control from rioters and looters.
I remember my dad speaking about the looters "schvartzahs" (blacks in yiddish), how they were acting like animals turning on their own kind and ruining their neighborhoods.
This was the day I knew I was white, and because I was afraid of that was going on in the city, I was glad I was.
Growing up in rural Iowa in the 30’s and 40’s, I had never seen a black person until I entered high school. Then there were two black boys in school. I had little contact with them. I was never taught to be prejudiced even though I had grown up in a white society.
When I entered college, my room mate who grew up in a segregated Kansas City told me how difficult it was for her to drink from a fountain after a black person. I was shocked!
When Duke Ellington and his band came to play a concert at the college, there was no motel in Waterloo or Cedar Falls, Iowa, that would let them stay over night. They had to be housed in a dorm at the college. I was the editor of the College newspaper and wrote an editorial about the irony of this.
I was introduced to the idea of "white" in 1967 when I was 7 years old and I was invited to a friend's birthday party. Melody was African-American and my parents told me I was not allowed to attend the party because she was black. My older sister who was 19 at the time took me aside, out of hearing of my parents, and told me that our parents were wrong and she would get me to the party. Everything went as planned that Sunday afternoon and I did go to the party. I don't recall my parents ever finding out. My parents have both since passed away. Dad would be 91 and Mom would be 88 if they were still living. My parents did "evolve" and make changes in their thinking as they aged, but in 1967, that was who they were.
25 People answered the question. Below is a transcription of their handwritten notes. Each story is separated by a blank line.
As a youngster I grew up in a community of mostly white people except for a neighborhood called “Hershey Hill.” When we passed through this area, my mom would tell us to lock our car door, and we did. I noticed that the porches and front yards of these homes were filled with people with brown skin and as I grew older, equated this with the chocolate candy for which the neighborhood was so named. How clever, I thought.
At eight years of age, my dad coached my basketball team and we gave rides to a girl who lived in Hershey Hill. One evening I asked her if she was scared to live in Hershey Hill. She cried, my dad got mad at me and I suddenly realized the thoughtless prejudice of my family.
When I first went to Nipher junior high with kids from the Meacham Park area, I was taken aback by the dark skin and loud, aggressive behavior of the black kids. It took me most of high school to stop being startled by both of these aspects.
My first memories were living on a military base in Germany. We had lived on and off base, so I knew we were Americans and not Germans. In the states, from second grade on, I lived several years in Lincoln, Nebraska. At some point we heard about Omaha having problems but I probably didn’t realize those problems may have been a result of being poor and black until high school. However, we did have a handful of black families all accepted as part of our community. In grade school the immigrant kids seemed more exotic and different than the black kids. The kid’s parents spoke Lativan and the girl with a really long braids had a funny name. They were different.
The three black kids in our high school were just kids. It didn’t seem like they were different. I didn’t really know about problems until I was out of high school. Lincoln was a lot different from Omaha and way different from St. Louis. Now I know there are a lot of black kids at another high school in Lincoln and racial tensions were not unknown. It was just not something my family had to deal with. However it is possible that her family’s choice of high school may have been based partly on race. What we were told was that it was because my brother wanted to be on the debate team.
I grew up in a country that was 99% white and 95% one religion. Sometime around 10 years of age, I was at an amusement park, where they had rides and so on. In one corner they had some shows, singing and so on. One little closed area had inside an exotic “jungle” show. A featured part was a black person, presumably African, who was dressed in a grass skirt holding a spear. He walked on hot coals and broken glass. He said not a word and an emcee narrated. I thought of Tarzan books. It was obviously cool. These exotic people lived in a land far away. Among us white people lived a small number of gypsies, the only minority that were different already by the way they dressed.
We had a sort of passive religion, a religion weren’t mostly in school. Religion was not a major part of ethnic identity, at least not in childhood. Language was a major barrier between “us” and “them.”
I then had to become “them.” though still part of white people! In my 13th year I was in an urban Chicago school and did have one black friend, one of the handful of black kids in the school. I had trouble understanding several kids, they spoke poorly. My black friends spoke perfect Midwest English.
By the time I was a toddler, I knew “white” was considered superior, or preferable, to “black,” but because of an early memory of a friendly black man, I could not figure out why.
When I was six or seven years old my father, a social worker in Kansas City was helping us with bailing people out of jail during the riots following King’s assassination. Late one night he came home tired and frustrated and it was the first and only time I saw him cry. This was a monumental in my thinking about the divide that existed between the races and I definitely knew I was white.
I was 2 ½ years old when I first knew I was white. We had a black cleaning lady once a week.
When we were driving downtown and my father pointed out the ‘ziggaboos’ and I saw chocolate colored people. But somehow I knew he was wrong to call them that. So from an early age – five? – I knew my father and I had different beliefs.
Growing up in Edwardsville, Illinois and going to Catholic school, I had no exposure to any ethnic city other than Caucasians and primarily Catholics. I do remember an African American – although I did not know that term – called “preach” who walked the streets of downtown and ran errands for merchants and lawyers from the county courthouse. He was extremely friendly and well liked by the community. I had a sense that I was different from preach in many ways. Skin color was just one of those ways.
I first knew I was white at age 12, in 1964, in downtown St. Louis. A black man saved my life. Obviously, he was a good person. The only difference between us was the color of our skin.
Somewhere around six or seven years old I learned I was white when my father worked with the Mill Hill missionary fathers were coming and going between Africa and St. Louis and England. As Catholics we work for the poor who always seemed to be black. Living in the city of St. Louis my other experienced was a racist grandfather who – for as long as I can remember – talked about the “niggers” who we saw around us. Then in seventh grade we move toward integrated neighborhood which I loved. It was always confusing until then. Now I am struggling with the “whiteness” in many ways of our congregation. It just doesn’t feel like home. I wish I had suggestions...
My first recollection was when I was around 10 years old walking up to town in Sparta, Illinois where my grandma and grandpa lived. I was with my sister who was 11. Two girls of color approached us and we all exchanged looks and remarks, thus I knew that I was white and they were black.
When I was growing up in Kirkwood I only saw white people. I don’t remember seeing many people with dark skin until TV, and I went to college at a SIU in Carbondale.
I grew up in a town and state that had very few minorities. However, in second or third grade, I became friends with an African American girl named Laverne. My mom and I would go to her house (in a “bad” part of town) and bring her back to our house so we could play together. I was fortunate to have parents who didn’t see people as black or white.
When I was a child, age 5 to 12, I lived in a small town of block from the county courthouse. Our next-door neighbors on both sides were “rich,” business owners in town whose homes were brick. We rented a white framed two-story house from one of them. The other had children my age, my only playmates. They also had a black maid, whom I noticed a dark skin, but I never saw any other discrimination. A block away lived a black family you the mother was renowned for her barbecue, which another neighbor used to buy and take home. I don’t remember any other contact with black people except the black AME small white framed church, which was right next door to our big Zion UCC church uptown, only a couple of blocks on the other side of the courthouse.
I went to church camp in the late 1950s, early 1960s, and met kids from Fort Smith, Arkansas. The civil rights movement and the lunch counter demonstrations across the South came in to my consciousness. The kids I met at Camp became penpals, and I learned there older college aged siblings were participating in the protests. The music at church camp that we didn’t like was due up – early rock ‘n roll – so I joined with three or four black kids and started an a cappella to a group that sang at Camp Aurora and Windyville, Missouri.
After college in a few years at Monsanto – when they started hiring blacks – I met the best friend I had there for over 25 years I’ve been retired six years now, and we still get together for dinner several times a year – recently to celebrate Obama’s nomination.
I still find “white” and “Caucasian” we are words to describe myself. I’m German through and through, but intellectually I know that race as such doesn’t exist scientifically. It’s a weird world and getting weirder the longer I live!
I think I knew I was white when I knew black people were not “allowed” in our neighborhood or schools in 1945. “They” had their own neighborhoods and their houses were not nice – they didn’t keep them up. Then I didn’t think more about it – until I was old enough to see the injustice. I began to imagine what it must be like to be another race. I had to deal with fear also. I was afraid of black people. I stayed clear.
Of course that changed you I’m still afraid of hatred no matter where it comes from – and uncomfortable sometimes. But, I have found love and appreciation. I also see progress.
My parents talked about the Negroes. It seems difficult to say the word... we were driving they talked in general – they did not point. But I could see and feel the difference. I could feel a difference because of the way my dad said the word: Negro.
I graduated in January 1955. And I knew that the schools would be integrated in February 1955. I first realized that it wasn’t because no “Negroes” lived in my school district and that none came to my school – I was shocked to learn that they were not allowed to come to school. P.S. I. thought of myself as “Italian” but then new I was “white.”
There was a woman my grandmother called “the maid.” My grandfather called her “the colored gal.” Tinnie and I loved each other, or at least I loved her and she was very, very kind to me. The first time I realized we were different colors I at least had the sense to feel guilty. My grandma and I had lunch at the kitchen table and Tinnie said on a stool at the counter. I asked me to come sit with us. But my grandmother said, oh no, she preferred to sit at the counter. Tinnie did not smile at me, concentrated on her lunch, and I knew it wasn’t the truth. I knew that she was somehow considered inferior, and I felt very bad about that I felt bad because I loved her. Incidentally, my grandmother always was polite and considerate of her employees and unfailingly went through the annual struggle of paying Social Security on their behalf.
I grew up in Hungary (100% Caucasian population) and the first time I realized I was white was when I saw black students in my biology class at the local university.
I grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois. Quite a while ago now. About that time I was in kindergarten, my mother told me that I should not talk to the “dark” people on the buses, which we regularly rode around town. She said their skin was dark because they were bad and we were very lucky because our skin was white. I can remember thinking two things: (one) that the dark people were different shades and (two) I wasn’t white like milk or my white crayons, but I knew if I said these things, I would be “in trouble are you” shortly after this, I was watching a “arc” mother on the bus with her children and she was very good to them and I thought my mother was wrong or she had lied to me.
This is something that happened with my twin boys when they were four years old. Their best friend was a black boy from preschool. It was early summer and we had invited him over to play. I told the boys that could change into their swim trunks before getting into a little wading pool in the backyard. A few minutes later, my boys came running out of the bedroom and one of them said excitedly, “mommy, mommy, guess what! Vernon’s black all over.”
They had obviously thought previously that only his face and hands were black (the visible parts). I’ve always loved this memory.
I grew up in Chicago and when Martin Luther King was assassinated, there were terrible riots in the city. I particularly remember because it happened the day before my birthday, and the police were telling people not to come down into the city until the streets were under control from rioters and looters.
I remember my dad speaking about the looters "schvartzahs" (blacks in yiddish), how they were acting like animals turning on their own kind and ruining their neighborhoods.
This was the day I knew I was white, and because I was afraid of that was going on in the city, I was glad I was.
Growing up in rural Iowa in the 30’s and 40’s, I had never seen a black person until I entered high school. Then there were two black boys in school. I had little contact with them. I was never taught to be prejudiced even though I had grown up in a white society.
When I entered college, my room mate who grew up in a segregated Kansas City told me how difficult it was for her to drink from a fountain after a black person. I was shocked!
When Duke Ellington and his band came to play a concert at the college, there was no motel in Waterloo or Cedar Falls, Iowa, that would let them stay over night. They had to be housed in a dorm at the college. I was the editor of the College newspaper and wrote an editorial about the irony of this.
I was introduced to the idea of "white" in 1967 when I was 7 years old and I was invited to a friend's birthday party. Melody was African-American and my parents told me I was not allowed to attend the party because she was black. My older sister who was 19 at the time took me aside, out of hearing of my parents, and told me that our parents were wrong and she would get me to the party. Everything went as planned that Sunday afternoon and I did go to the party. I don't recall my parents ever finding out. My parents have both since passed away. Dad would be 91 and Mom would be 88 if they were still living. My parents did "evolve" and make changes in their thinking as they aged, but in 1967, that was who they were.
August Board Report
Lead Minister’s Report to the Board of Trustees
August 15, 2008
My goals have been to: (1) Assure worship services are meaningful and challenging; (2) Administer Chapel business (including staff); (3) regular social & pastoral contact.
Worship Services
Sunday Services. Last month, I was on vacation, and checked in regularly with the staff to ensure we were making progress on our summer plans. Study Leave has occupied me for the first two weeks of this month. I have about half the 30 service topics I need, and am making headway on the last half. In the coming year, we hope to have more “non-competes” when it comes to Sunday fund-raising, and we hope to be able to champion our Social Action projects throughout the year via a “Mission Minute” in the Sunday service.
Chapel Calendar. I have been trying to do more coordination regarding the Eliot Calendar and Sunday Services. Bonnie and I met with Amy Stark to discuss calendar planning for Social Action projects and shared collection recipients and the shared collection calendar. This year, we also will be coordinating with the Partner Church Council (PCC). Last year, we ran into a few glitches. For example, the PCC scholarship kickoff Sunday was also to be a shared collection Sunday.
Chapel Business
Bookkeeper. As you read in the Office Report, our bookkeeper had a heart attack recently, so we don’t have complete numbers for you but we do have a financial snapshot for you.
Membership Coordinator. Citing family concerns, Jennifer Foss has resigned. She has indicated she is available to train the next MC. I believe we need the Membership Coordinator function to keep newer and older members engaged and committed, to help with volunteer recruitment, and some development work. Having a non-member fill this position has not worked out. Hiring a member is fraught with possible complications. After considerable discussion, Bonnie and I think we have an Eliot member as a possible candidate. We will meet privately with that person to discuss possibilities, and will report to the board on our progress.
Summer Projects. Our publications are moving along on schedule. We hope to have the picture directory, the information guide, new brochures, and new business cards ready early next month.
Building and Grounds. You can read about our progress in the Office Report.
Our Neighbors. Our lawyer for the property line dispute notes that we won our court case, and that the neighbors have put up a sign on the side of their RV that is “is retaliatory in nature and highly inaccurate factually and legally.” He recommends we ask them to take the sign down, and if they don’t to make a formal complaint to the City of Kirkwood. I am sending his letter under separate cover. I believe the board should make a decision as to how we should proceed, and that ideally we will decide this at the August board meeting in advance of the program year kick off, September 7.
Disaster Preparedness. I attended a two day conference on disaster preparedness held at Concordia Lutheran Church in Kirkwood. We will be reviewing our procedures for fire drills, earthquake, tornado, and ‘invader’ drills in the coming year. We will be distributing kits for families for disaster preparedness sometime this fall.
Social & Pastoral contact
Community for Understanding and Healing. They have had some book reading and reviews. Bonnie attended the most recent one. Their community conversations start up again in September, and I plan on attending those.
Police Chaplain program. I have signed up for my first “ride-a-long” and will report about that in my blog and board report.
Pastoral Activities. I have been keeping up with Bonnie in this area. And I plan to start my regular pastoral routine (monthly quota of visits and calls initiated by me) in September.
August 15, 2008
My goals have been to: (1) Assure worship services are meaningful and challenging; (2) Administer Chapel business (including staff); (3) regular social & pastoral contact.
Worship Services
Sunday Services. Last month, I was on vacation, and checked in regularly with the staff to ensure we were making progress on our summer plans. Study Leave has occupied me for the first two weeks of this month. I have about half the 30 service topics I need, and am making headway on the last half. In the coming year, we hope to have more “non-competes” when it comes to Sunday fund-raising, and we hope to be able to champion our Social Action projects throughout the year via a “Mission Minute” in the Sunday service.
Chapel Calendar. I have been trying to do more coordination regarding the Eliot Calendar and Sunday Services. Bonnie and I met with Amy Stark to discuss calendar planning for Social Action projects and shared collection recipients and the shared collection calendar. This year, we also will be coordinating with the Partner Church Council (PCC). Last year, we ran into a few glitches. For example, the PCC scholarship kickoff Sunday was also to be a shared collection Sunday.
Chapel Business
Bookkeeper. As you read in the Office Report, our bookkeeper had a heart attack recently, so we don’t have complete numbers for you but we do have a financial snapshot for you.
Membership Coordinator. Citing family concerns, Jennifer Foss has resigned. She has indicated she is available to train the next MC. I believe we need the Membership Coordinator function to keep newer and older members engaged and committed, to help with volunteer recruitment, and some development work. Having a non-member fill this position has not worked out. Hiring a member is fraught with possible complications. After considerable discussion, Bonnie and I think we have an Eliot member as a possible candidate. We will meet privately with that person to discuss possibilities, and will report to the board on our progress.
Summer Projects. Our publications are moving along on schedule. We hope to have the picture directory, the information guide, new brochures, and new business cards ready early next month.
Building and Grounds. You can read about our progress in the Office Report.
Our Neighbors. Our lawyer for the property line dispute notes that we won our court case, and that the neighbors have put up a sign on the side of their RV that is “is retaliatory in nature and highly inaccurate factually and legally.” He recommends we ask them to take the sign down, and if they don’t to make a formal complaint to the City of Kirkwood. I am sending his letter under separate cover. I believe the board should make a decision as to how we should proceed, and that ideally we will decide this at the August board meeting in advance of the program year kick off, September 7.
Disaster Preparedness. I attended a two day conference on disaster preparedness held at Concordia Lutheran Church in Kirkwood. We will be reviewing our procedures for fire drills, earthquake, tornado, and ‘invader’ drills in the coming year. We will be distributing kits for families for disaster preparedness sometime this fall.
Social & Pastoral contact
Community for Understanding and Healing. They have had some book reading and reviews. Bonnie attended the most recent one. Their community conversations start up again in September, and I plan on attending those.
Police Chaplain program. I have signed up for my first “ride-a-long” and will report about that in my blog and board report.
Pastoral Activities. I have been keeping up with Bonnie in this area. And I plan to start my regular pastoral routine (monthly quota of visits and calls initiated by me) in September.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
