White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation

Ebony and Ivory

74 Like most twelve-year-old girls, I schemed incessantly about how to find a boyfriend. Desegregation brought a whole new level of complication to the possibilities. Virginia’s miscegenation laws had been taken off the books in 1967, just four years before I started being bused. The test case that reached the Supreme Court, Loving v. Virginia, was brought by an interracial couple who wanted their marriage recognized instead of outlawed in Virginia. The Rolling Stones celebrated interracial sex in “Brown Sugar,” but “Brother Louie,” the popular and ominous song about a “black as night” girl and her “whiter than white” boyfriend who was violently disowned by his parents, was more reflective of southern attitudes . School authorities made sure we had as little social contact as possible by canceling school dances and sports—a response that was similar to Richmond’s removal of benches at public parks after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There were unwritten rules about interracial interaction between girls and boys, enforced by both races. The black girls who came to school wearing Michael Jackson buttons and Jackson 5 T-shirts brushed me off when I said I was a fan, too. Back then, Michael Jackson still had dark skin, a flat nose, and kinky hair. The girls also ignored me when I tried to jump into their playground discussions about which Jackson brother was the cutest. They asked me instead about the comparable white-boy group, the Osmond Brothers. I thought the lead singer, Donnie, was a ridiculous teeny-bopper. Nonetheless, when Loretta found his mailing address in the back of a fan magazine, I joined the girls at the white table in the lunchroom in writing fan letters to him. “Dear Donnie, I know you’ve never heard of me, but I really like your music,” I lied. None of us received a response. At our white table in the cafeteria, the other girls and I used to ask each other to guess which boys we liked. We always rotated through the same five or six white boys in our classes. My favorite was the smart-aleck Adam, who teased me about everything from the color Ebony and Ivory 75 of my socks to my chest size, but he kept things interesting. When Liz and a gum-snapping brunette on her team named Darlene liked the same boy, Darlene challenged Liz to a dress-up contest. Here’s what I remember: the boy was supposed to choose the girl who looked better that day. Liz complained that it was stupid, but she did wear a dress on the appointed day instead of her usual jeans and peasant blouses. He picked the other girl, which annoyed Liz. She ended up saying that he wasn’t worth it, anyway. Loretta was the only one of us who actually found a boyfriend within the school. Terry, his chin-length bangs sweeping across his freckled forehead, was willing to walk with her in the hall between classes. His high-water bell-bottoms revealed his white socks with every step. He even made her a bracelet in the school’s shop class and had it engraved with his name on one side, hers on the other. One day, I decided to reveal that I liked Dion, a dark-skinned boy in my homeroom who was built like a basketball player. He liked to sing while he beat time on the desk until Miss Gregg shushed him. After he had to stop, I would move my hands silently above my desk to let him know I wished he could keep going. We’d grin at each other. I made every girl keep guessing until she gave up. Then I announced , “Dion!” Everyone fell silent for what seemed like several minutes. Finally, Loretta said, “You didn’t tell us he was black!” “So?” I said. “You’re asking for trouble,” Loretta said, straightening her shoulders with self-importance. I hated to admit it, but she was right. The trouble could come in many forms. First of all, there was my mother. She had once told me that when she was a student at the University of Michigan, a black man from the Caribbean had asked her for a date. She ended up turning him down. She remembered telling him, “I’m from the South. There would be too many problems if I got serious with you and tried to bring you home.” I had no intention of getting serious in...