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80  july 4, 1998 Once more I took note of the psychological acuity, the capacity to figure out others with a certain thoughtful detachment. D uring the 1970s, at the height of a racial conflict in Boston prompted by a federal court order that African American students be admitted to schools across the city in the interest of a bettereducation,Igottoknowanumberofthoseyouths—highschoolers who lived in Roxbury and were bused to South Boston, a mostly Irish Catholic neighborhood. In no time people were at one another’s throats. Those who lived in Roxbury were anxious to break out of poverty and the long-enforced isolation as well that had been the fate of their ancestors—slavery, then segregation down South, and finally, up North, neighborhoodschoolscommonlyovercrowded,understaffed,educationallyinadequate .ThosewholivedinSouthBoston,so-called“working-class families,” regarded themselves as victims. “Their” school was now under the control of a judge who himself lived outside of the city. And that was the bottom (residential) line: If you had money, you could buy your way out of the uncertainty and tumult of a court-supervised social and racial crisis. Indeed, if you had money, you could live in some of Boston’s swankier neighborhoods and send your children to private schools.  81 At the time, though, the “class” side of the issue was buried under the outburst of anger, on both sides, connected to “race”—and, of course, it was not lost on many in either Roxbury or South Boston that many of those most in favor of this version of “integration” were white people who lived outside Boston, untouched by the strains of such a struggle. I was going to that high school, talking with young men and women coming there by bus from Roxbury and with those who had always come therefromthestreetsofSouthBoston.Ihadstudiedschooldesegregation in the South, and now I was observing it in the city where I’d been born and grew up. One African American student I got to know, Mary Ann, was a remarkably stoic and farsighted person who kept telling me she “understood” the evident anger of some of the white people of the city. “It’s new, and they’re scared,” she said tersely. As I listened to her I often wondered whether I would be able, under suchcircumstances,tosummonformyselfthatkindofunderstanding—to put myself in the shoes of others who weren’t being welcoming to me. I chalked up some of Mary Ann’s generosity of spirit to her good-natured, hopeful temperament. She was a cheerful, bright young lady, and she was determined, as well, to outlast the cold, unfriendly reception she was receiving all the time. But four months into that experience, Mary Ann’s grandmother suddenly died of a stroke, and the girl was devastated. The grandmother had effectively been Mary Ann’s mom, because her mother worked hard and long cleaning rooms in a Boston hotel and had to contend, as well, with rheumatoidarthritis.Thegrandmother’ssuddendeath,atonlyfifty-eight, stunned everyone in her family—and Mary Ann was more than tempted to leave school, get a job, and try to take care of her ailing, hard-pressed mother and her younger siblings. Yet she stayed on, though obviously 82  saddened. She had usually worn bright clothes; now she dressed in black. She had usually tried to smile, answer questions eagerly and spiritedly in class;nowshewasslowtorespond,distracted.Sheshouldbeinthat“fancy hotel cleaning up after those rich folks,” she told me once. One day, when I came to talk with Mary Ann, she had an “incident” to report: “A girl came up to me in the hall. They never talk to me, so I was surprised. She asked if I was ‘all right.’ I said yes, sure. She said she noticed I was wearing black all the time. I said yes, my gramma died. She said she was sorry. Then she told me her father died a year ago, and she knew what I was going through. It was nice of her.” Nicer still that the girl, Alice, dared break with her many South Boston school friends and kept talking with Mary Ann—not the kind of behavior likely to earn her applause from her friends. Alice asked Mary Ann if there was anything she could do to be of help. No, there wasn’t. Finally, Alice asked for Mary Ann’s address so she couldsenda“sympathycard.”MaryAnnwastouchedbutskeptical:“She’s still upset because of her father, that’s why she’s trying to be nice to me.” Once more...

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