Reflections on Colby's Some of My Best Friends are Black

How does today’s reading complement your former reading?

What is an issue that you see in these readings that you can take action about? What is the issue and what steps can be taken?

This excerpt from Cross-X filled in some blanks for me in terms of the on-the-ground experiences of the people involved in the story told in Some of My Best Friends are Black.To think about the messy cauldron of angry black students, racist (overtly, covertly, or subliminally) staff members, and impressionable and probably earnest white students at Central helps me understand the morass that the problem of race in Kansas City is. Teachers being assaulted, but, for what? A brawl between Central and Raytown South, but, the stars and bars flying proudly at that school? I’d never known that. There is no action without reaction, no effect without cause. The white parent who abandons a school or the teacher who resigns after seeing an issue of violence hasn’t done so entirely because of racist motivations. The fear they feel is real; the danger they face is real, though may be of their own doing. Police officers don’t usually mace a person in the face unprovoked, but even if the officer did, it doesn’t justify violence to the degree of the riot described. It’s so messy. So, so messy.

I don’t know what to do about the issue that this raises for me. What immediately jumped into my head was the recent “adoption” of Van Horn High School by the Independence School District. Obviously a contentious issue at the time, I hadn’t really delved deeply into the arguments or deeply seeded issues. I remember that Kansas City fought hard and even chained the doors at one point. It was overtly NOT framed as a racial issue. Independence was stepping in for the citizens of Independence, Missouri who wanted to be able to send their children to an Independence school. This wasn’t about black or white, but Van Horn (according to the DESE website) was 30% white in 2008 and 68% in 2009 when Independence took it over. Overnight, Van Horn became as white a school as Chrisman and Truman. Yet, no one is talking about this. How do we get people to discuss racial issues?