Understand folks beyond your block

I was 15 or so at the time, the late 1960s, hanging out with two friends who lived nearby. Ours was one of those nice, middle-class neighborhoods that was not so nice two blocks over. All right, I’ll say it. I lived in a white area next to a black area — homes with lawns bordering inner-city apartments. I never went in the inner-city direction.

The three of us were talking when the conversation turned to black people.

“I saw one yesterday,” said one of my friends. “You seen any?”

“Yeah,” said the other. “I saw two last week.”

What they meant is African-Americans from “the other side” walking through “our side.” They didn’t welcome it.

Here’s the irony.

The three of us went to a private school nearby that was around one-third black. We may have been wary about “intruding” African-Americans in the neighborhood, but in school, blacks were the cool kids. Many of our student leaders were black, and most of us white students wanted to be like them, even adopting black speech, and at times a black “gait.”

In short, race was complicated then, and still is now — which was the point of Barack Obama’s speech last week.

He did not, as some expected, take the politically expedient road of disowning his controversial ex-minister. He talked instead about how race remains a central challenge of the American experiment.

That neighborhood I just talked about? It’s called South Shore, on the south side of Chicago, and it’s where Barack Obama’s wife grew up. That school I mentioned? It’s the University of Chicago Lab School, where I went from kindergarten through high school. Barack Obama’s children attend that school today. It’s in Chicago’s Hyde Park, which is where the Obamas now live, and where my family moved after I graduated. It, too, is a classic city neighborhood — nice homes bordering the inner city.

Let’s get back to that conversation with those two friends. If we so venerated the black kids at our school, why were we talking like bigots about having seen some cross into our supposedly insulated enclave?

Because like most whites, we had a dual view of black folks. It’s a secret white people don’t like to talk openly about, but even as many Americans are more committed than ever to bridging the divide, we want to do it with “good blacks. “Even open-minded whites are often wary of “bad” blacks. It sounds like Barack Obama’s grandmother was the same way — suspicious of black men on the street even as she committed her life to raising a black child of her own.

Jesse Jackson

My upscale neighborhood wasn’t all white. For a while, Jesse Jackson lived a block away, and I still remember waving once and calling his name when I saw him on his porch. He coolly nodded, but smiled. The jazz great Ramsey Lewis lived nearby, too.

And little did I know that the family of Michelle Robinson, eventually to become Michelle Obama, was in the same neighborhood.

There’s no question that black families in my area were just as concerned about the pressures around the neighborhood. That’s human nature — to protect your investment and lifestyle. A few weeks ago, I talked to Michelle’s brother, Craig Robinson, who is now Brown University’s basketball coach, and we shared stories about our old blocks. I asked how 71st Street was, the commercial stretch where we’d go to stores and movies. He shook his head. It had gone downhill. Too bad, we both agreed.

I feel a lot of pride that a black family from my area has gone so far and proven what an exceptional country this is.

But were I to walk the edges of that neighborhood, I’d have my concerns, and even hidden prejudices about, well, those “other” black people.

That’s why his speech was important. It was a reminder that we all have stereotypes that remain a central American challenge.

Such city neighborhoods teach something that applies to all America.

If you don’t try to understand, and work with, the folks beyond your block, your own stake could be threatened.

Because like it or not, we’re all in this together.

X Patinkin writes for the Providence Journal. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service,