Camden Resurrected

Easter is one of my favorite liturgical seasons. It calls to mind the heralding of spring (most years, anyway), and it means the breaking of the Lenten fast. For me, Easter means that I go over the Ben Franklin Bridge to Sacred Heart in Camden.

Sacred Heart has a 4:30 am Easter Vigil.

We stumble blearily into the basement of the church, where the liturgy of the Word takes place. Everyone holds candles, but we are in the dark until Father Michael lights a fire to represent the resurrection. Then we light our candles and have a procession into the church for the liturgy of the Eucharist.

By the time the vigil ends, we go out into the sunlight. And then we break the Lenten fast with an enormous feast (usually featuring everything that we gave up).

It’s a celebration, joyful and hopeful, one that visually and aurally reminds us of Christ’s coming to life again.

But in Camden, NJ, Easter takes on another meaning.
Camden is considered one of the worst cities in the US. Its crime rate easily makes it one of the most dangerous. When I lived there, in 2007-08, Camden had 52 murders—out of a population of just under 80,000. If Philly had Camden’s murder rate, we’d be seeing over 700 murders a year.

Beyond that, Camden is economically devastated. The best term I could use for it is “post-industrial wasteland.” When the factories started to shut down post-World War II, people who could get out got out, leaving behind those who couldn’t afford to flee to the suburbs. The city has since been wrecked by poverty and urban decay. There are abandoned homes on every street. About sixty percent of residents are on welfare, and the average household yearly income is about $18,000. The high school dropout rate is astronomical.

And then there are environmental problems. In my old neighborhood, we had a sewage treatment plant for the entire county, a trash-to-steam factory, a concrete plant, a root licorice factory, and a scrap metal yard. If you see an abandoned lot, usually it’s a Superfund site*. On a bad day, when the wind blows the wrong way, the air smells so bad that you want to gag. It’s the Lorax’s worst nightmare.

I could go on, but one gets the picture. Mere statistics won’t do Camden justice.

To me, Easter in Camden means defying all of those statistics.

At Sacred Heart, they’ve been doing that for years. The priest, Father Michael, is in his 70s. At first glance, he’s a little old Irish (really Irish, not just Irish-American) farmer-poet; at second, he’s the man who’s galvanized many people to work for justice and peace in a city that knows neither.

In Waterfront South, the neighborhood where Sacred Heart is, there is a greenhouse, a community garden, a theatre, an affordable housing organization called Heart of Camden, and an environmental education organization called the Center for Transformation.

My friend Andrea, who runs the greenhouse through the Center for Transformation, calls what she does “practicing resurrection.” My old boss, Sister Lucy, who ran a holistic wellness organization, had a card on her desk that said, “We will plant olive trees where before there were thorns." The South Jersey Catholic newspaper once called Sacred Heart “a place for renegades.” I call it a place where people follow Jesus.

I have no desire to romanticize people’s lives there. It’s not easy. When I lived there, I lived in a community house connected to Sacred Heart, and I still often felt isolated from the rest of the world. But I am reminded every time I go back how beautiful my old neighborhood can be.

At every Mass at Sacred Heart, we end with a prayer that says, Heal all that is broken in our lives and in our streets. Easter season in Camden means embracing hope and new life despite the devastation, despite the statistics and the violence and the poverty. It means looking toward healing and pushing back at injustice. And, I think, above all, it means calling the city, and ourselves, to life.


P.S. (If anyone wants more information on Camden, I’d recommend Howard Gillette’s Camden After the Fall. I’ve also written about Camden a couple of times on my blog, and I’ve posted pictures of my neighborhood...I can repost if anyone wants me to.)


--Sarah
__________

* In government terms: "Superfund is the name given to the environmental program established to address abandoned hazardous waste sites. It is also the name of the fund established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, as amended (CERCLA statute, CERCLA overview). This law was enacted in the wake of the discovery of toxic waste dumps such as Love Canal and Times Beach in the 1970s. It allows the EPA to clean up such sites and to compel responsible parties to perform cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA-lead cleanups."

In layman's terms: it's a site that is so environmentally hazardous that it needs "super funds" to clean it up. There's another category of hazardous waste sites, Brownfield, that means the land is slightly less toxic. ____________________________________________________________________________

 

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Comments

[Brin (not Meir)]

I think I understand now why -- after over a decade in Cherry Hill -- we never once went to the town our county was named after. I didn't like all of the people in New Jersey, but I have only positive memories of the place itself. I suppose my parents were protecting me, keeping their children away from the bad parts.
I was always told "North Jersey is what gives us the 'polluted hellhole' reputation, South Jersey is what gives us 'the Garden State'", but it's clearly more complicated than that.

I realise I'm focusing more on the thing you need hope about rather than the hope, but the phrase "Camden County" has so many positive associations for me, it's disturbing to think things are so bad so close.

[Rowen]

I think a lot of people in NYC also associate New Jersey with that industrial stretch that you go through on your way to the Lincoln tunnel. My roommate and I once took a bus out to Paramus (we decided we needed to go to a mall, NOW), and were shocked at how pretty it was.

[The Kidd]

This is both inspiring and down to earth. Thank you. We often hear negative things about religious leaders but there are also those, like Father Michael, who do the hard work of making the world around him better; who quietly work for justice and peace. It would be so much easier to leave places that are spiritually dark and head for brighter, safer territory but it is people like Andrea and Sister Lucy who bring light into the places that need it most. "Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armour of light." (Romans 13:12)

[Mmy]

How different from the classic media images of New Jersey -- from The Sopranos to The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

And, when one hears particular people trumpeting as to who are the "real Americans" I think to myself of communities such as these. It seems sinful (and I seldom use that word) for politicians to be talking about "fixing the budget" by cutting social programs while communities such as this are struggling. Gutting the EPA will not make their lives better. Undermining Medicare will not make their lives better. Cutting food stamps won't make their lives better.

While those inside the beltway obsess about the stock exchange, the return on bonds and the rate at which capital gains are taxed these people are working hard to simply make it through each and every day.

From this atheists point of view -- the behaviour of the haves and have-mores is simply sinful

[Laiima]

sarah, I teared up reading your post, feeling inspired and more hopeful.

I've never been to NJ.

[Mmy]

Sarah, I meant to include this in my comment -- this was an extremely moving piece.

[Raj]

Thanks, sarah! I love your article, and it feels good to know that there are people doing such good work (I checked out Sacred Heart's website). You know, if I lived near you, I would totally be up for visiting Sacred Heart with you some Easter.

[Amaryllis]

Thanks, Sarah, this gives me hope.

I grew up in central New Jersey, and I know there's much more to the state than that rather post-apocalyptic stretch of turnpike between Elizabeth and New York, but even I stayed out of Camden. I really admire what you and your friends and your parish are doing there.

The South Jersey Catholic newspaper once called Sacred Heart “a place for renegades.”
That's when you know you're doing something right! Thank God for the renegades, we can't leave it all to the bishops and the Real True Catholics.

Sacred Heart has a 4:30 am Easter Vigil.
And I admire anyone who can wake up for that! I suppose it makes more sense than the usual practice of holding the vigil the evening before. It's kind of contradictory, isn't it, that even as the inside of the church goes from darkness into light, the outside goes from light to darkness.

Easter season in Camden means embracing hope and new life despite the devastation, despite the statistics and the violence and the poverty.
Since I left you a modern poem for Good Friday, here's a classic for Easter:

Easter Communion, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast:
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips,
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu's; you whom the East
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships,
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,

God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent:
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.

[sarah]

Aw, guys, thanks for your kind words. *blushes*

I posted pictures and things on my blog (www.agirlcalledraven.blogspot.com) if anyone wants to check it out.

Camden is complicated, obviously. It's much more complicated than what most people make it out to be--drugs and guns and stuff. Walt Whitman called it "the city invincible" once, and it's sad to see what it's become.

My friends who live there now are some of the best people I know. Two couples in my old community are raising their kids there (babies at this point). Some people, I think, would be aghast at this, but I think it makes a huge statement. They're not running away to the suburbs--or to Philly, actually. I only lived there for a year; they're there for the long haul.

More later (I'm at work). :)

[Andrew Glasgow]

The South Jersey Catholic newspaper once called Sacred Heart “a place for renegades.”

I would assume this was not said in a positive sense?

[sarah]

@Andrew: Actually, it kind of was positive. Here's the article:

http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/place-renegades

[Kristin]

@mmy: How different from the classic media images of New Jersey -- from The Sopranos to The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Or Jersey Shore.

@Sarah: I really liked this article. I think I might have felt better about things Christians were doing in Camden if I'd gone to Sacred Heart. Instead, I was affiliated for one summer with Urban Promise, Tony Campolo's organization. I was 19, and this was 1999.

That organization was completely ridiculous. We were not allowed to walk around or travel around Camden alone...ever. I knew that a lot of the theft there involved either petty theft or *drug-related violence.* I reasoned that the threat of petty theft didn't bother me that much, and certainly I was not likely to be shot by accident in the middle of the day. I don't think that kind of fear-mongering attitude coupled with "protect and shelter the delicate white people from the scary black and Puerto Rican population" is particularly helpful to anyone.

That and... I wasn't really impressed with Tony Campolo or his son. Huge cult of personality around him. I found it creepy. And I'm not very fond of conservative evangelical Christianity that dresses up in pseudo-liberal language in order to sound progressive (I have the same kinds of misgivings, for example, about people like Jim Wallis and Ron Sider).

Your church, though, sounds more thoughtful and more integrated into the community.

It's been years since I've been back to Camden. One of my aunts lived in the Pennsauken area for a long time, so I'd pass through it quite a bit in my travels. Thanks for writing this piece.

[Kristin]

@ Brin: I think I understand now why -- after over a decade in Cherry Hill -- we never once went to the town our county was named after. I didn't like all of the people in New Jersey, but I have only positive memories of the place itself. I suppose my parents were protecting me, keeping their children away from the bad parts.

You mean, from poor people? People of color? I doubt you meant that in this way, but maybe it's best we don't characterize geographic locations in moral terms. "Bad" Camden. "Good" Cherry Hill. Really?

Myself, I found Cherry Hill kind of soulless and bland. A bunch of strip malls that look like they could be anywhere at all in the United States. Not to mention, I found its wealthy school system, just a few miles away from schools where kids don't even have enough books in Camden, disgusting. Wrong. Not "positive" in any sense, unless "positive" just means I didn't need to worry about being robbed if I flaunted large wads of cash.

I wouldn't normally veer on insulting someone's town like this. I guess it feels to me like you're insulting Camden and its residents. And also falling into this too common belief that better off people in that area need "protection" from the poor. These are your words: but the phrase "Camden County" has so many positive associations for me, it's disturbing to think things are so bad so close.

I mean it's hard to read that without interpreting it cynically... For me, at least. I mean, how hard for you, really, to have to think about suffering people a few miles away whom you never see and never interact with (from the sound of it here).

Huge disparities between poor and rich? Well, this is the United States. The Cherry Hill/Camden divide is one of the nation's starkest illustrations of what it means.

[Kristin]

@mmy, Kit and hapax: I tried to say this on the blogaround thread, but it kept disappearing. Is there a spam filter or something?

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for rounding up my comments for the blogaround, especially regarding the relief effort in North Carolina. I'm sorry I didn't get around to organizing that information for you in an email.

[The Board Administration Team]

Kristin: Can't see any reason for you to be blocked -- your IP number isn't among those that register as spam.

If it happens again email us. For now I would put it down to the strangeness that can be TypePad

[sarah]

@Kristin: I didn't work a lot with Urban Promise; they're mostly in East Camden, I think? We did have some interns from UP at Eve's Garden (our greenhouse garden). I think in the past decade the furor around the Campolos has settled down--I went to Eastern University, where Tony was.

As for not traveling around alone, well, it does seem a little ridiculous. But there have been incidents of people being shot in the middle of the day, minding their own business. One of my friends was sitting on her steps watching some of the neighborhood kids when a guy started shooting down the street from her. And there was a four-year-old caught in a crossfire the year I lived there, and a woman killed coming out of the deli a couple of months ago. On the other hand, if someone *does* start shooting randomly, I don't see how being with another person would help...We had a bit of a common-sense, don't-be-an-idiot thing going on in our community, as in, don't walk alone after dark.

The other thing was that most of the people in our neighborhood knew who we were. If someone were coming in to buy drugs or whatever (we had a lot of women who were prostitutes on our block), he or she might not know us, and that could cause problems...some guy once asked me if I wanted a sugar daddy. Yeah.

In general, I didn't necessarily feel *unsafe,* mainly because our neighborhood was so small. I actually was more leery of the cops than anyone else. Then again, South Camden's much different from East or North Camden.

[Amaryllis]

@Kristin: as I recall, Brin is still in high school, and was even younger when her family moved away from New Jersey. It's not uncommon for young children not to be aware of much beyond their immediate surroundings, and to be shocked and grieved when they get a little older and find out that other children, so close geographically, are so much worse off.

I found its wealthy school system, just a few miles away from schools where kids don't even have enough books in Camden, disgusting.

There, you'll get no argument from me. New Jersey's highly localized educational system has a lot to answer for.

I, as I said, grew up in New Jersey. Which was why it was kind of disorienting to move to Baltimore, where "Cherry Hill" has quite another set of associations.

(That is, urban, mostly poor and mostly black, vs. suburban, mostly affluent and mostly white.)

---
I'm seeing all of Kristin's comments, by the way. "The strangeness that can be Typeapd," indeed.

On the other hand, Disqus over on Patheos has taken to eating my posts lately. You can't win.

[Kristin]

@Amaryllis: You are right. I'm sorry. I don't know why I keep forgetting that Brin is in high school. Committing it to memory now so I don't do this again.

[Kristin]

@Amaryllis: There, you'll get no argument from me. New Jersey's highly localized educational system has a lot to answer for.

TRIGGER WARNING: Nothing graphic here, but I do talk about inequality and prejudice. And I'm sort of...viscerally angry about it.

Yeah. On that subject, I do have a bit of a bone to pick, and it's probably why I can be so harsh about New Jersey. (This has now found Brin caught in the crossfire twice. I'm sorry, Brin. I really am. No excuse to get caught up in this stuff and forget it. Amaryllis is right, and I'll remember now.)

Four people from New Jersey (most very recent transplants to North Carolina) have been elected to the Wake County school board (Raleigh area) in a stealth election in which only people associated with the Tea Party knew what was going on (In the past, school board elections have been apolitical, and mostly decided by teachers and administrators, who were generally the only people to vote.). This has been one of the best public school districts in the country in spite of the fact that it's not well-funded. And this is because resources have been almost equally spread throughout the county, and there weren't any bad schools. Our best schools? The magnet schools? They're always located in the poorest neighborhoods.

But four hardline conservatives from suburban New Jersey have initiated an effort to re-segregate our hard-won school system... They want to introduce "neighborhood schools" just like New Jersey's failed, inhumane ones. You know, wealthy people going to wealthy neighborhood schools, poor people without enough textbooks going to badly funded schools...

The Democratic mayor of Raleigh engaged in what was taken, I think, for nativist rhetoric when he said something like, "We have new people, people who aren't from around here, coming in and dismantling everything we've achieved." But I actually think a more important point was lost. People who are not well-versed in the history of racial segregation and the Civil Rights movement have no business making education policy in this state. None. I remember the right-winger who controlled the school board when I was in high school? His name was Bill Fletcher. He instituted abstinence-only education. Even *he* supported the school diversity policy because... It wasn't a political issue back then. We'd been integrated for decades, and everyone realized that it made our school system exceptional. When these people came in, it was the largest school system in the U.S. still actively integrating schools.

So, yeah. "Neighborhood schools." I'm a bit bitter... Actually, I'm quite bitter about the suburban New Jersey folks who've come in, displayed complete ignorance of the social and political factors involved here... And moved to undermine the system. We are now being investigated by national accreditation bodies. You know, the people who sign off on diplomas so that we can get into college. I don't think these people will be reelected, but they have a year left. Dismantling things is easy. They can accomplish quite a bit in the span of a year.

I've been thinking a lot about North/South animosities lately, mainly because a study came out yesterday suggesting that an alarming number of Southerners still wish the South had won the Civil War. I share none of the kinds of reprehensible views that came out in yesterday's study, but... But. On the issue of North/South animosity. There is that. I'm really, really angry about the fact that the North so easily writes off racism as a "Southern problem." That disparities in the cities throughout the Northeast are ignored. That no one even really talks about equal opportunities to go to high quality schools anymore. I'm angry about that, and I'm more angry that a handful of ideologues are trying to impose it on a functional system already in place.

But I think all of it eventually boils down to the fact that this country is becoming a more and more cruel place to live. For pretty much everyone. A difficult place to live and earn enough money to eat, even if you have outstanding education credentials. A place that, as Stephen Colbert said last night, loves rich people so much that it doesn't tax them! But is more or less okay with poor people and people with disabilities just dying from lack of adequate healthcare. That doesn't give a fuck about public services we'd always thought were inviolable--like public bloody education.

I just found out that Wisconsin has enough signatures to recall those six Republicans. And I'm glad for them. But I live in the *least* unionized state of the Union, and the one with the bloodiest history of union busting. I'll *never* have access to protection as a worker unless I move. This wasn't ideal, but never seemed unduly troubling before the world imploded and we *actually* began to worry about the reintroduction of nineteenth century working conditions. It started with the poorest people... Undocumented farmworkers dying from heat exhaustion. It's spreading. Not to that extent. But damn... We are fucked.

I am not that great at putting things in perspective.

Well, anyway, as I said on Facebook last night: This new study about racist opinion in the South... And the working conditions I've been seeing on the ground... I think, if nothing else, these things are illustrative of the fact that, while federalism may have utility as an abstract political model, "state's rights" is never going to be a redeemable political position in the United States.

[Kristin]

So, shorter version of that comment: I just feel hopeless. I feel...better when I'm living in other countries--even more forgiving of my own. I'd been thinking "hm, okay, so moving to Wisconsin?" But, no, I honestly think I'm gonna have to look into finding a job outside North America. In the long run. It really can be cruel, living here.

[sarah]

Hey Kristin, do you have a link to that study?

[Kristin]

Yeah, here:

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_GAMSNC_0421.pdf

It seems to be a relatively well-designed statistical survey to me. I'd like to know more about their sampling procedures, but overall, well done. And while it's skewed in the direction of Republican racism, I was astounded to see, for example, that the number of Democrats in NC who want to outlaw interracial marriage is in the double digits. I think *some* of these are likely to be elderly people who never officially changed their party after the Democratic/Republican shift, when the Democratic party was no longer the party of segregation... But I don't think that explains the entire 15%. It's... It's profoundly discouraging, when you'd thought people promoting--dying for--justice had accomplished more than they really have. But like I said to kisikileia last night, I'm sure these stats wouldn't be surprising to many people of color in the state. And we did elect Jesse Helms term after term after term, so probably "we're not as bad as South Carolina and Mississippi" falls pretty flat. We're not that far-removed from our segregationist past.

I argued otherwise recently on this blog. That was naive. I was wrong.

[Brin (not Meir)]

When I said I was protected, I didn't mean I should have been. I'm still in the process of figuring out just how much of a sheltered little bubble I lived in and continue to live in.
When I was younger, I didn't realise I was rich. (In hindsight, going to Disney World four times in seven years seems indicative. Since Dad had to change jobs, we're not as rich as we used to be, but still well-off.) Until I was eleven or twelve*, I didn't realise why the only time I ever saw black people was the occasional fellow shopper or restaurant patron, never in places where I might actually get to know them.
I can't say much about school quality. I went into the elementary school many times for Girl Scout meetings, but I don't know what it was like to attend it, nor do I have others to compare it to.
The northern part of the New Jersey Turnpike was part of our standard route to Massachusetts for the annual visiting of relatives. Either we skipped the part described as "post-apocalyptic", or I was just oblivious. Probably oblivious.

Please let me know if I've said something (else) wrong. I need to learn these things, and get used to learning them.

*That was when a branch of the Golden Corral buffet opened about twenty minutes' drive from our house. We'd been to a Floridian branch on one of the aforementioned Disney trips, so we decided to go. As we got close, I noticed that all of the pedestrians were black. We were the only white family in the restaurant.
I knew then that segregation wasn't something long ago and far away. It was right here, right now. I was nervous, but not directly afraid of them. I was afraid of me, of my bigotry bubbling to the surface, and uncomfortably aware that the two fears were effectively identical from the outside. I need to be actually comfortable around black people, and that requires exposure I'm not in a position to get.
We went back to that restaurant several times between then and moving (when I was about 13 3/4), and it always felt the same.

On a completely different note, the URL for this page just says "c" instead of "camden-resurrected".

[renniejoy]

An anecdote of white, female, geek privelege in high school - It was a complete surprise being told a few years after graduation that there had been drug and gang "problems". My jaw may have literally dropped open.

[Amaryllis]

Kristin: But four hardline conservatives from suburban New Jersey have initiated an effort to re-segregate our hard-won school system... They want to introduce "neighborhood schools" just like New Jersey's failed, inhumane ones. You know, wealthy people going to wealthy neighborhood schools, poor people without enough textbooks going to badly funded schools...
Oh dear. No wonder you're sensitive on the subject.

For a supposedly progressive, Democratic-leaning, socially diverse, high-population-density state, New Jersey has a stubborn streak of "I've got mine, you're on your own." And the every-town-for-itself system just institutionalizes inequity in the name of local control.

I should say, when I say that, that haven't lived there in years. But from what I hear, kicking people when they're down in the name of "fiscal austerity" is all the rage in Trenton these days.

Brin: When I said I was protected, I didn't mean I should have been. I'm still in the process of figuring out just how much of a sheltered little bubble I lived in and continue to live in.
And I'm sure your parents thought they were doing the best thing for you. It's difficult, sometimes, to know where to draw the line, how much to expose your children to if you're privileged enough to have the choice.

We live in a suburb of Baltimore, and we used to take our daughter into the city frequently. We went to concerts and festivals and museums and restaurants, and explored the different neighborhoods, and I never felt that I was endangering her or overburdening her (caveat-- there were neighborhoods I wouldn't have wanted to take her to, but at least she knew that they existed). But to hear some of her friends' parents, you'd think we were taking her to the moon, only more dangerous. And if they weren't obsessing about crime and drugs and "those people," they still weren't interested in anything the city had to offer. "That's not for us," they'd say.

They missed a lot, is all I can say.

As for "post-apocalyptic," I wasn't really referring to the people or the towns of northern New Jersey; once you get off the turnpike, there's great wealth, and urban poverty, and a whole lot of middle-class people trying to get by, just like everywhere else. I was just thinking of the visual effect of that stretch of turnpike where it's all oil refineries on one side and urban marshland on the other, which is what many people associate with New Jersey.

And I was probably remembering the last time we made that drive, which was at night in heavy rain, and it was all even more unnerving.
Here's Joyce Carol Oates on Night Driving on the Jersey Turnpike.

And that's three links. Will Typepad accept them all? the suspense is killing.

[Brin (not Meir)]

I was just thinking of the visual effect of that stretch of turnpike where it's all oil refineries on one side and urban marshland on the other, which is what many people associate with New Jersey.

I don't know about anyone else, but that's what I thought you meant. What I meant was that, according to what I know of our usual NJ - Mass route, I've been on that part of the turnpike a least a half-dozen times and never noticed what a lot of people apparently remember most about my home state. Maybe the times I was old enough that I would remember I had my nose in a book at the time.
*clicks on first two links* Actually, looking at those, I probably did look and thought it was pretty.

Bedtime now. I was going to set aside the last twenty minutes of the day for daydreaming, as I usually do, but I just had to check if anyone had responded to my comments. Maybe tomorrow night.

[Amaryllis]

Maybe the times I was old enough that I would remember I had my nose in a book at the time.
Oh, you were one of those kids!

Me too. I always used to read if I was in a car for more than five minutes, too.

Some of the Meadowlands areas are quite beautiful, in an austere kind of way. But the refineries are just strange-looking.

Good night.

[Ross]

I didn't realise why the only time I ever saw black people was the occasional fellow shopper or restaurant patron, never in places where I might actually get to know them.

My wife is from North Jersey (and for what it's worth, my mother is from South Jersey). I may have mentioned it before, but one of the big culture shocks she got when she moved down to Maryland was the sort of mild and reflexive racism that's incredibly pervasive here. Among the affluent classes, it's not usually something we natives notice much, but it's absolutely there and something those of us who care struggle with (Privilige check. It's something that often makes some of us stop and say "If I say/do this, will people think I'm being racist?" Probably more often than "If I say/do this, will I be being racist?")-- something in the way you put your hand over your wallet or hold your purse a little tighter in some neighborhoods. Or how the older folk talk about how much safer it used to be before we got so many of those people in the neighborhood. Or how your eighty-year-old grandmother casually tosses out The Single Most Offensive Word In American English.

But the thing that really got to her, eventually, was the realization that she wasn't any less racist out of some kind of moral superiority, but rather that opportunities to be racist had so rarely come up in her formative years. It really hit home when we were looking at school districts, and on a lark, she compared the one she'd gone to to the one where we were looking to move, and couldn't find a school district in any of the New Jersey towns she knew the names of that wasn't at least 30% whiter.

[Brin (not Meir)]

Privilige check. It's something that often makes some of us stop and say "If I say/do this, will people think I'm being racist?" Probably more often than "If I say/do this, will I be being racist?"

I think the thing that made me most uncomfortable about the Golden Corral experiences was realising that if the people in question are the objects of the racism you may or may not be doing, the two things are the same. It didn't really matter that I was afraid of the evil within me rather than them. Being uncomfortable around black people is being uncomfortable around black people, and even if it's a layer removed (as mine is) from the toxic sludge bubbling in the depths of your mind, it's still caused by that stuff.

[Rowen]

I don't mean to derail the thread or go wildly off topic, but this talk of Golden Corral makes me REALLY hungry for some of their giant buttery rolls with the whipped honey butter.

You may now return to discussing things that actually matter.

On the subject at hand, I've often worried about how I would be perceived in a neighborhood where I was the minority. Though, I quickly realized that no one wants to be pandered to, and that going out of my way to be "Friendly" would probably come across poorly. So, I realized that it's not about "others" but about treating everyone the same. Which, for me, is sticking my nose in a book (Unlike the time when I tried to shake the hand of my Orthodox Jewish neighbor's wife. The look she gave me. . .)

[Amaryllis]

Ross: But the thing that really got to her, eventually, was the realization that she wasn't any less racist out of some kind of moral superiority, but rather that opportunities to be racist had so rarely come up in her formative years. It really hit home when we were looking at school districts, and on a lark, she compared the one she'd gone to to the one where we were looking to move, and couldn't find a school district in any of the New Jersey towns she knew the names of that wasn't at least 30% whiter.

Yep. Sounds very familiar.

On my TBR list, although I haven't obtained a copy yet, is a collection of New Jersey writers entitled (of course) What's Your Exit? A review in a Newark paper cites Paul Lisicky (from Cherry Hill):

In his essay “New Jersey Notebook,” from “What’s Your Exit,” Paul Lisicky, a Cherry Hill native who teachers at New York University, offers his own thoughts on its rich literary heritage. It may be the state’s bewildering social geography — the ostentatious Deal mansions a five-minute drive from the oceanfront decay of Asbury Park, for example.

“I’m not at all arguing that this kind of stratification is peculiar to New Jersey; it’s a mark of how we live in the hybridized America of the 21st century,” he writes. “But in the most densely populated state, the lines drawn seem to be sharper, more apparent, because there are so many of them.”

And the interesting thing about New Jersey's lines is that the geography is mostly social: you usually can't tell by any natural feature or physical separation where one town ends and another begins. But everybody can see where the lines are anyway.

[Brin (not Meir)]

you usually can't tell by any natural feature or physical separation where one town ends and another begins

One of the things I found odd upon moving to Canada was that around here there's spaces, usually made up of farmland, between one town and the next. (With one exception. There's a reason why Kitchener and Waterloo are sometimes written Kitchener/Waterloo, as if they were one city.)
In turn, the locals found it odd that I considered Cherry Hill, population ~70,000, to be a medium-sized town. (Okay, maybe medium-large.) Even in Southern Ontario, most densely populated part of Canada, 70,000 is a city.

[Kristin]

@ Ross: I may have mentioned it before, but one of the big culture shocks she got when she moved down to Maryland was the sort of mild and reflexive racism that's incredibly pervasive here.

It hasn't always been so mild. I was born in Frederick, MD. My family did not come from there. They're from North Carolina and Virginia, so my parents were quite surprised when they moved to town for my dad's job and were greeted by a sign reading, "The Ku Klux Klan of Maryland welcomes you to Frederick." That was in 1980. My parents both say they heard the N-word more there during the early '80's than they'd ever heard it growing up in the South *during the '50's and '60's.*

[Kristin]

But the thing that really got to her, eventually, was the realization that she wasn't any less racist out of some kind of moral superiority, but rather that opportunities to be racist had so rarely come up in her formative years. It really hit home when we were looking at school districts, and on a lark, she compared the one she'd gone to to the one where we were looking to move, and couldn't find a school district in any of the New Jersey towns she knew the names of that wasn't at least 30% whiter.

This dynamic is somewhat familiar to me. I went to a large, culturally diverse public high school, except for the fact that we had only three Jewish students. Three. So, I grew up not knowing anything about contemporary anti-Semitism or about anti-Semitic slurs. We learned about the Holocaust, of course, but we never really talked about myths like the blood libel or horns or anything else... I had the impression that anti-Semitism was not really a very serious problem in the United States--well into adulthood. Then, later when I lived in the Bethesda area and then Montreal, I was shocked by what people told me. One of my students said that her college roommate had wanted to "look at her horns." And I realized... It's not so much that the people I grew up with couldn't be anti-Semitic. It's mostly that we rarely had any *opportunities* to express anti-Semitism.

[MaryKaye]

My adopted son spent his first ten years in a very white US small town. One might expect him not to be too racist due to lack of opportunity, but the sad fact is that, while he does not hate black people, he others them, fears them, and sees them through an almost opaque stereotyping. He asks quite frequently "Why do all black people X?" for various values of X ("love basketball", "wear their pants low", "talk with an accent", "say the N-word"), and never seems to grasp that the answer is always "They don't all X" for anything except a few trivialities like "have ancestors from Africa" or "have darker skin."

He doesn't see this as racism--to him racism is deliberately putting down or harming black people--and is always dismayed when people mention that he's racist. But he's unlikely ever to make a black friend until he gets this under control, because he misses or rebuffs any friendly approaches and magnifies any hint of hostility. A few months ago I saw him repeatedly bump into a black kid at the pool because he was trying so hard not to interact that he wouldn't even adjust course to miss him.

It seems to me that what he needs is a lot of exposure to mixed groups--he is nowhere near able to deal with cliques of black kids, which is what his middle school has--but I'm still groping for ways to achieve this. Seattle just got written up as having unusually few African-Americans for a major US city: random summer camps, classes, etc. aren't likely to help much.

He is kind of okay with black adults--he is better with adults than kids in general--so I really need us to be around black kids more, but how?

[Kristin]

@marykaye: It seems to me that what he needs is a lot of exposure to mixed groups--he is nowhere near able to deal with cliques of black kids, which is what his middle school has--but I'm still groping for ways to achieve this. Seattle just got written up as having unusually few African-Americans for a major US city: random summer camps, classes, etc. aren't likely to help much.

Perhaps there are "cliques of black kids" because others in the school share your son's hostility toward black kids. When I'm in an unwelcoming/hateful environment, I tend to band up with people who are like me too (usually, this involves disability and non-heterosexuality).

Also, I don't really think the answer is to instigate situations in which unknowing black folks have to suffer his hostility. It really isn't their job to educate him. It's yours. Ours. The jobs of parents. And white people who know better. We don't get to keep asking oppressed people to teach us basic Anti-Racism 101. There are plenty of great resources available. We should use those, and refrain from entering the conversation until we actually know something and can contribute (which is, in my experience, less often than we think).

I was a thoughtful, bookish kid, so I may not be entirely representative... But I learned because my schools taught us about the history of slavery and then the recent history of integration...pretty well. I also learned because my schools instantiated us with a base knowledge of "shit you do not say" when I was very young, so I was never around many peers who said racist things. I remember one white girl when I was in middle school complaining about how "black people smell" in reference to hair chemicals and products, and she was an exception. That stood out, and I never really talked to her again because I didn't really have a culture in which it was acceptable. I associated comments like that with white sheets and burning crosses.

Which is my only advice to you, really. I'm not a parent. I'm not raising kids. I don't know much about it. But if anything, I think the *reason* that a lot of my white peers are fairly...evolved on this stuff is that we were reared in an environment in which that was not tolerated. So, perhaps... Don't tolerate your son's baseless, racist opinions, whatever that may mean in practice. If his school and his teachers aren't educating him about this stuff, you have to do it.

I learned a lot when I was a kid from books about Black experiences of segregation, like the children's Will the Circle Be Unbroken? series. I've no idea if your son likes to read, so... My point, though, is that my culture taught me, and I think that's how it usually works. It wasn't that hard for me because I was a sensitive little kid, and I was interested in films like Roots (We watched that as a family when I was 6 or 7.) and documentaries like Eyes on the Prize. I have no idea what your son is into, but this may take a little more imagination for you...if your kid less geeky than I was.

[Kristin]

Also, in terms of *why* the ancestors of slaves know very little about their ancestors in Africa... You might tell him why this is the case. That cultural groups were ripped apart and forced to speak English and follow Christian traditions. They were stripped of their names, too, and given Anglo-American replacements. There was a book I read about this when I was very young... It was Scott O'Dell's My Name is Not Angelica (Which... I don't know how I'd rank that book as an adult, but it made an impression when I was a kid.).

Finally, I really, truly do not recommend ANY of the Henry Louis Gates documentaries, ever. I feel I should say this since I just encouraged you to take advantage of available resources. When he's not engaging in a kind of Orientalism directed at Africa, he's condemning African-Americans, for example, for... Well, I saw his doc about poverty in America. And I was at a talk in which he censured black women for getting pregnant "out of wedlock" and "not knowing who their baby-daddy is." Most white people learned his name when he was arrested due to racial profiling. In fact... He's not a particularly good anti-racism advocate himself.

[Mmy]

@Brin: In turn, the locals found it odd that I considered Cherry Hill, population ~70,000, to be a medium-sized town. (Okay, maybe medium-large.) Even in Southern Ontario, most densely populated part of Canada, 70,000 is a city.

Some of that is due to different understandings of what a town or city is--and some of those have little to do with size. There are cities in Michigan that have populations of less than 10,000.* Being a city is sometimes an issue of whether under the state laws a community can levy income rather than property taxes.

*Meanwhile the largest municipality (in terms of square kilometres) in Southern Ontario is an amalgamation of former cities, towns, villages and counties. And nope, it isn't Toronto.

[Deird, whose country has its own unique forms of bigotry]

But the thing that really got to her, eventually, was the realization that she wasn't any less racist out of some kind of moral superiority, but rather that opportunities to be racist had so rarely come up in her formative years.

This is why Australians don't tend to be racist against people of African descent. It's not that we're not racist at all - quite often we are - but African people? Nope. Reason being, there weren't any here until a few years ago. Five years ago, I could count the number of African-descended people I'd encountered on one hand.

This makes things interesting for internet discussions, because Americans can list heaps of stereotypes of African Americans, and tend to assume that I share them. Whereas the only stereotypes I can think of for African-descended people is "happy, sociable, and probably just moved here".

[Kristin]

@ Deird: I dunno... On one hand, I think what you're saying sounds about right. But on the other hand, I'm aware of a certain trend in Anglophone countries, and I'd be surprised if it totally bypassed Australia. I'm referring to the ways in which the colonial attitudes of the British colonizers differed quite a bit from those of the French, Portuguese and Spanish colonizers. I mean this in the sense that...expressions of racism were quite different. Not better or worse anywhere. There weren't "good" colonizers. But that Anglophone beliefs about "the races" tended to be fairly consistent--and produce some similarities across the board.

Anglophone/Germanic racism is distinguished in part by its paranoia about "the mixing of the races" and deterministic understandings of race. In Spain, you could go through a ridiculous bureaucratic procedure to "become a citizen of Spain"--and a de facto "white person." So, in the places colonized by these countries, racial intermarrying and other things were more common. Racism in these countries tended to take a somewhat different form.

So, hate ideologies as we know them in the English-speaking world tend to be influenced by these deterministic attitudes, and by paranoia about intermarrying and the "loss of whiteness." Hence, lynchings in the American South over false allegations of black men "raping" white women. "Anti-miscegenation laws" intact in the US until the late 1960's. These views usually are influenced by fixed ideas about who "the races" are as people. On a pseudo-scientific scale that ranks attributes like intelligence. And they've been influential at least in every English-speaking country I've ever been to--and any that I've studied in-depth.

My guess is that you're right that these ideas are not influential in Australia because, as you say, people from Africa have not been there for very long. That said... I suspect that the same ideas about race that shaped the United States, Canada, South Africa...and most others, shaped ideas about race in Australia. And that those who were invested in creating the system would have, in fact, had similar views about black Africans (I understand that "black" is a racial slur in Australia, but I guess you know it isn't here. Same as "colored" is a racial slur here but not in South Africa.). I also think this is why Neo-Nazi type hate groups may never totally disappear from the English- and German-speaking countries. Their ideas have a centuries-old basis in deeply-held cultural beliefs, and these are hard to uproot altogether.

Which is why white people who talk about how they "don't see race" in the United States make me so angry. Yes, of course, they do, and ignoring the privilege that makes them capable of saying such things without throwing up helps no one. Just because "the races" have no basis in sound science, this doesn't mean that they aren't *real* to us as people. More so for those who have been oppressed due to race than the rest of us. It falls flat, telling someone whose great-grandfather was lynched in the 1950's that you "can't see race." It's insulting.

[Brin (not Meir)]

Kristin: I had the impression that anti-Semitism was not really a very serious problem in the United States--well into adulthood

I had the same impression, but for opposite reasons. There are so many Jews in Cherry Hill that Judaism was perfectly ordinary and accepted. Being Jewish myself, I assumed that if anti-Semitism still existed in America, I would have been subjected to it. I figured anti-Semitism had mostly died down after the Holocaust because the Nazis gave it a bad reputation.
I still haven't been subjected to any, but there's a lot less Jewish food in the local Zehr's than there was in the local ShopRite, and every year I have to explain Hanukkah to my Girl Guide troop (more specifically, why I usually have presents to talk about the meeting before they do).

[storiteller]

Your church in Camden seems like an urban version of the community I volunteered with about 5 years ago in very rural Maine: http://www.homecoop.net/. It's run by a couple of nuns, who themselves admit (and embrace) the fact that they can veer pretty far from traditional Catholic teachings. It started off as a crafters' co-op and then expanded to meet people's needs, which are many in that area. Now, it includes a food pantry, a set of craft shops (weaving, woodworking, etc.) that teach others those crafts, a land trust program where people help build their own houses, multiple homeless shelters, day care, summer camp and more. It was a lovely place to work, where it was recognized that everyone belonged there, needed to be there, and contributed whether they were a volunteer or a recipient of services.

In terms of unrecognized privilege, the idea that I was extremely privileged but that it didn't make me a better person was thankfully emphasized to me over and over growing up. My mom is a special education teacher in an inner-city school. Between hearing her stories and helping her out, I realized early on that not only was I lucky for my family to be financially stable, but I was also lucky that I had a loving, caring family. Now, I'm really grateful for that lesson and am surprised when other people don't realize it. In college, I volunteered for a summer camp that served free lunch in the same city as my mom's school. I was quite taken-aback when my now-mother-in-law asked, "Don't these children's parents feed them lunch?" Just the vast ignorance of all of the possible factors involved - single moms working, lack of nearby grocery stores, etc. - straight-up startled me.

[MaryKaye]

@Kristin writes: Also, I don't really think the answer is to instigate situations in which unknowing black folks have to suffer his hostility. It really isn't their job to educate him. It's yours. Ours. The jobs of parents. And white people who know better. We don't get to keep asking oppressed people to teach us basic Anti-Racism 101. There are plenty of great resources available. We should use those, and refrain from entering the conversation until we actually know something and can contribute (which is, in my experience, less often than we think).

That sounds reasonable in the abstract, but if the problem is a child who goes stiff, prickly, and hostile *when in the presence of black teens* it is not clear that any solution that doesn't put him in the presence of black teens has any chance of helping. I don't think most of the behavior is particularly conscious or deliberate. I can say "Don't stereotype" but I can't usefully say "Don't be afraid". As long as his idea of these situations is full of fear, he will react badly to them. I don't see how he will learn not to fear unless he has the opportunity to make more positive outcomes.

I am also looking at a child who has very severe psychological issues around all peer relationships. Talking to him about 'don't do that' has not been very helpful in the past. He is in therapy and has been for many years; it makes progress, slowly, but in the meantime he needs practical help in dealing with the people around him.

Or, to be more blunt, what do you suggest I *do* when my child tenses his shoulders, sets his face, and puts his chin forward when meeting a black teen?--given that he cannot see himself, given that teens react really negatively to parental intervention in their affairs--not only my son but likely the other teen as well, who now has to suffer a white woman poking into his social affairs--and given that anything past a very, very gentle reminder is likely to produce a complete "Everyone hates me, I'm a worthless human being" emotional collapse? It's all very well to say "This is the parent's responsibility" but talking to my son about Black History Month is not going to make this stop happening. Modeling non-racist behavior is necessary, of course, but it's not sufficient. I am an adult and I cannot model teen behavior. (Believe me, I have tried: my son flatly does not relate how I behave to how he can behave around peers, and has said so many times.) Only another teen can do that, and there is no way that a group of only white teenagers can model how to behave around a black teenager.

So I do what I can to not allow him to retreat into only interacting with white people, and I fight the stereotyping whenever I hear it, and it's not enough. Maybe it will be enough when his overall mental health improves, which is going to be a long uphill battle. But it worries me in the meantime.

[Deird, who agrees with your comment, for the most part]

I understand that "black" is a racial slur in Australia, but I guess you know it isn't here.

Um... really? Because I would have said it was in America but wasn't here.

As a rule, it would be impolite to refer to an Aborigine (our most common black people group) as "black", simply because it's not specific enough, and hence dismissive of their identity. But I don't think I've heard it used as a racial slur.

[Sixwing]

Thank you, all, for the discussion in this thread. I have nothing to contribute, but it has been a fascinating and eye-opening read.

[Kristin]

Um... really? Because I would have said it was in America but wasn't here.

It's not a slur in America. It's better-liked by the black community, and just as acceptable as African-American.

I think it was Chally, an Australian woman who blogs at Feministe, that I learned this from? A slur used in reference to your indigenous population, maybe?

[Deird, who finds this conversation interesting]

Hmm...

*thinks about it*

It could depend on what you're saying. For instance, "black people" would be very different to "blacks".

And then there's the term "blackfellas". (An Aborigine could happily classify the world as "blackfellas" and "whitefellas" and say "the blackfella has a long history of...", and no-one would think twice. If I did the same, it would be HIGHLY OFFENSIVE IN EVERY WAY.)

Bear in mind that Chally is from Sydney, and I'm from Melbourne - our cultural context is slightly different.

[Kristin]

I can say "Don't stereotype" but I can't usefully say "Don't be afraid". As long as his idea of these situations is full of fear, he will react badly to them. I don't see how he will learn not to fear unless he has the opportunity to make more positive outcomes.

Why can't you say "don't be afraid"? Look, I don't know anything about your son's situation, and I am not a big fan of armchair psychology. And I'm not telling you to "talk to your son about black history month." Is he not interested in *any* kind of media? Movies or books or news or...anything? At all? Video games? Comics, even? I think these things are a lot more influential in shaping young peoples' ideas than you give them credit for. I dunno anything about comics or video games, so I couldn't advise you specifically, but I know that there are socially responsible forms of *all* kinds of media out there. You can ask around.

Meanwhile, it's *cruel to the Black teenagers* who have to deal with your son's hostility to force discussions and conversations. He won't learn anything from awkward, forced social interactions. And, in my experience, racists are more likely to listen to what *other white people* tell them to do than anyone else. It's maddening and wrong, but there it is.

Who are his friends then? I mean, here I'm getting into weird territory that's kind of not my business... You asked for ideas, not advice about how to deal with a child who has serious emotional baggage to deal with. I can't really be of help there. Seattle is a pretty liberal city, from what I understand. But... Surely all the white people there are not afraid of all black people. All I can say is that if *I* had said the kinds of things your son seems to say *at school,* I would have been badly treated. Maybe hit (and I'd have kind of deserved to be hit, a little bit).

I was not raised in a community in which this kind of thinking was tolerated. For all of their faults, my parents would never have let me get away with saying those kinds of things. I felt as clueless as you do when I was teaching students in Pennsylvania who would raise their hands when we were studying critical race theory to tell me that they "can't help being afraid of black people." I felt powerless. They had clearly not come from similar communities. We were living in a place with very few non-white people. I always had one or two black students in my classes, who were usually brought to *tears* while having to watch immature, 18 year-old white people coming to terms with their bigotry. I KNOW FOR A FACT that it's cruel to force interaction between marginalized people--and those who are hostile to the person's identity. Maybe you have an older friend who can deal with it and who volunteers? Otherwise, just... No.

I mean, what do people in Seattle do to teach their kids? If you moved to Raleigh or Durham, North Carolina, your kid would be forced to stop that kind of thing or risk greater social ostracism. I don't know how you teach people in Washington state. I've never been there.

You said your son has a lot of problems that have to do with his interactions with other teens. Has he been a frequent victim of bullying then? Because, if that's the case, I'm not sure that much can be done while he's in high school...unless you pull him out of that school. Kids are just very mean. If he's a victim of kids at his school, then... I mean, I am not sure his attitude is his biggest problem. I expect you're thinking more about his safety (not wrt "those scary blacks" but the school population in general). If you're in a very vulnerable state, no matter who you are, you won't really have room to get schooled by anyone.

[Kristin]

@Deird: Yes, basically, Chally said everything you're saying.

[Kristin]

But she did call it a slur. I don't know.