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shipperxThe way that my prom date in 1988 came about as a point of conversation entails more than a bit of conversation creep.
Yesterday, my mom was reading (Nelle) Harper Lee's obituary. I've posted before that I grew up in the same town as (Nelle) Harper Lee. It's a tiny town in South Alabama, and my Mom knew Nelle Lee personally (in an embarrassing tale, when I was 12 my mom showed Ms. Lee a chapter of fantasy fiction that I had written. Nothing like your mom showing your emo tween fanfic to an internationally famous author... ::embarrassed::). Anyway, mom had logged onto the website for the local funeral home to read the obituaries, not just for Nelle Lee but for another friend of hers that also passed away (link: http://www.johnsonfh.org/?pagetype=memlist There seem to be a many non-locals leaving condolences on the site for Nelle Lee). This conversation meandered into a conversation about the PBS special Slavery By Another Name ( http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/home/ ), the plot of "To Kill a Mockingbird", a condolence on the funeral home page where someone speaks about teaching "To Kill a Mockingbird" but "skipping the part about the trial" (WTF??!), and my Mom mentioning that, while dogwalking yesterday, her 67+ year old neighbor admitted to not only never having read "To Kill a Mockingbird" but also never having seen the movie -- the nexus of these conversations was my mentioning that it's actually surprisingly easy to live in a naive state of epistemic closure (there's a reason why these topics bring up "living in a bubble" that's a little too complicated for me to go into when I'm tired, but in my head there's a reason why these subjects overlap). This is where we run into my own nicely enclosed bubble of naivete and a discussion of my prom date in 1988.
A little background first.
It's difficult to recognize your culture (or your era) when you live within it. To you, it's "just the way that things are". It's only when you (at least mentally) step out of it that you can recognize that some of the things you consider "just the way things are" are in reality "just what you know". Things which seem "normal" to you may not be. One instance when this was brought home to me was when I was speaking with an online friend who did not grow up in the American South.
I grew up after the desegregation of public schools in the South. The events involved in desegregating schools in Alabama are the same black and white images in my head as everyone who wasn't there because it all happened before I was born. But to understand the area's "normal" in my childhood is to understand what came after desegregation -- white flight.
In a tiny town in the middle of nowhere with only one school system "white flight" took the form of a "private school" suddenly popping up a mile down the street from the public high school. The creation of this school was also before my time, so in childlike view, there had has "always" been two sets of schools, and it was openly known that the "private" school was white-only. The public school was integrated, though.
Looking back at my 70s kid-hood, there was real and earnest effort in some quarters. The public school was integrated, and not just with students. We had black and white teachers and black and white principals, etc. And when discussing this situation with the online friend I realized that --for white parents -- sending their kids to the desegregated school was a deliberate choice (see: white privilege). This had to have had an influence on the school's culture. I was taught my entire life that the private school was wrong and prejudiced, and that was the feeling off all the students in the public school -- white or black. Because if you thought otherwise (and were white) you would be at the other school. But -- and this is where the bubble of 'normal' comes in--while I had negative feelings about the school, it also lived in those blurry lines of just "what is". In retrospect, it should have provoked a greater visceral feeling of disgust. In real-time practice, it felt (again, white privelege) more like school rivalry, so (white privelege again) there was a sense that the other school was in the wrong, but it wasn't uppermost in our (white kids) minds to think "they're a bunch of racists".
So the story of my prom date in 1988.
My mother ran a store in town. Two doors down was another shop. The owners of the other store had a son my age... and he was cute. Quite cute. And he was always nice to me. I liked him. I like-liked him. My (quasi)boyfriend had sort of drifted away during the school year and by that point was dating someone else, so I screwed up my courage to ask the boy from the store two doors down to go to the prom. Asked HIM to the prom... and he turned me down.
Teen Girl Brain does a lot of things with being turned down like that. 'What's wrong with me? Did I do something wrong? Am I not pretty enough, sexy enough, likable enough?" No actual heartbreak involved, but I had liked him and thought him cute and it was embarrassing and a blow to the ego to be turned down. And I still needed a date. I was the chairman of the prom committee so "not going" wasn't an option. (For whatever reason juniors were in charge of doing all the work in arranging the junior/senior prom. Don't know why. It was just how it was done). Ultimately, what I did was ask a college freshman who had graduated from my school a year earlier, a nice guy I was friends with who loved dances (and who I knew was totally gay. But I logically-- and accurately-- thought he would be a fun date. We'd have a good time, and...well... I wasn't risking my teen girl ego again by asking him out. If HE turned me down, no biggie. It was 'just for fun'.
Also, in teen girl brain, while being turned down for the prom by the cute guy I had really wanted to say yes was not much of a problem in the big scheme of things, a minor mark on the the chart of life, I also never totally forgot the moment of teen girl embarrassment.
So, back to the conversation that Mom and I were having about To Kill a Mockingbird, segregation, and naivete.
In the midst of the conversation, mom mentioned this prom date incident and how it had angered her because a few years later (totally unknown to myself) the mother of the boy who had turned me down told my mother that he had wanted to say yes when I had asked him to the prom, that he had liked me and had wanted to go but "he just couldn't" because it was the PUBLIC SCHOOL PROM.
Jaw drop and I'm faced with my own lack of vision.
"Whaaaaaat???"
Wait. Wait. Wait. Let me get this straight. He didn't go to the prom with me, not because he didn't like me but because it was an integrated prom???! In 1988?! Seriously?!
"Hold on," I said. "He didn't go because there would be black kids there?" (Brain full of WTF)
She said she thought it was less that he had thought "that" (sure he didn't) than that it would be felt to be "socially unacceptable at his school to go to the public school prom." That the "other kids" at his school would look down on HIM for going to my integrated school's prom.
Again, what the actual fuck.
I was gobsmacked.
My teen-aged memory self was gobsmacked.
The 17 year old girl's angst over "What did I do wrong? Am I not good enough/pretty enough/whatever enough for this cute guy?" was all egocentric nonsense. The actual truth had never once crossed my mind. Had never even come close. I had never imagined. Oh good grief, how blind was I to have never have thought...
I mean, come on. He attended that "private" school. He and his family had chosen to attend that school and yet, my thought process was so shallow that this was an explanation that had never crossed my mind.
How shallowly stupid of me.
However he and his mom explain it to themselves ("social pressure?" Pfft) this was out and out racism. Turns out, he and his friends were so racist that the thought of attending a desegregated prom (IN 1988!) was more than he could handle.
I just can't even.
Strange how a random sentence from your mom can re-write a bit of your own ancient history.
You know what, I'm damn happy I took my openly gay friend to the prom rather than the "cute guy" next door. In fact, I would like a time machine to go back and tell my teen self, who was embarrassed about having been turned down for a date, that what I really should have been embarrassed about was that I had ever asked him in the first place.
Yesterday, my mom was reading (Nelle) Harper Lee's obituary. I've posted before that I grew up in the same town as (Nelle) Harper Lee. It's a tiny town in South Alabama, and my Mom knew Nelle Lee personally (in an embarrassing tale, when I was 12 my mom showed Ms. Lee a chapter of fantasy fiction that I had written. Nothing like your mom showing your emo tween fanfic to an internationally famous author... ::embarrassed::). Anyway, mom had logged onto the website for the local funeral home to read the obituaries, not just for Nelle Lee but for another friend of hers that also passed away (link: http://www.johnsonfh.org/?pagetype=memlist There seem to be a many non-locals leaving condolences on the site for Nelle Lee). This conversation meandered into a conversation about the PBS special Slavery By Another Name ( http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/home/ ), the plot of "To Kill a Mockingbird", a condolence on the funeral home page where someone speaks about teaching "To Kill a Mockingbird" but "skipping the part about the trial" (WTF??!), and my Mom mentioning that, while dogwalking yesterday, her 67+ year old neighbor admitted to not only never having read "To Kill a Mockingbird" but also never having seen the movie -- the nexus of these conversations was my mentioning that it's actually surprisingly easy to live in a naive state of epistemic closure (there's a reason why these topics bring up "living in a bubble" that's a little too complicated for me to go into when I'm tired, but in my head there's a reason why these subjects overlap). This is where we run into my own nicely enclosed bubble of naivete and a discussion of my prom date in 1988.
A little background first.
It's difficult to recognize your culture (or your era) when you live within it. To you, it's "just the way that things are". It's only when you (at least mentally) step out of it that you can recognize that some of the things you consider "just the way things are" are in reality "just what you know". Things which seem "normal" to you may not be. One instance when this was brought home to me was when I was speaking with an online friend who did not grow up in the American South.
I grew up after the desegregation of public schools in the South. The events involved in desegregating schools in Alabama are the same black and white images in my head as everyone who wasn't there because it all happened before I was born. But to understand the area's "normal" in my childhood is to understand what came after desegregation -- white flight.
In a tiny town in the middle of nowhere with only one school system "white flight" took the form of a "private school" suddenly popping up a mile down the street from the public high school. The creation of this school was also before my time, so in childlike view, there had has "always" been two sets of schools, and it was openly known that the "private" school was white-only. The public school was integrated, though.
Looking back at my 70s kid-hood, there was real and earnest effort in some quarters. The public school was integrated, and not just with students. We had black and white teachers and black and white principals, etc. And when discussing this situation with the online friend I realized that --for white parents -- sending their kids to the desegregated school was a deliberate choice (see: white privilege). This had to have had an influence on the school's culture. I was taught my entire life that the private school was wrong and prejudiced, and that was the feeling off all the students in the public school -- white or black. Because if you thought otherwise (and were white) you would be at the other school. But -- and this is where the bubble of 'normal' comes in--while I had negative feelings about the school, it also lived in those blurry lines of just "what is". In retrospect, it should have provoked a greater visceral feeling of disgust. In real-time practice, it felt (again, white privelege) more like school rivalry, so (white privelege again) there was a sense that the other school was in the wrong, but it wasn't uppermost in our (white kids) minds to think "they're a bunch of racists".
So the story of my prom date in 1988.
My mother ran a store in town. Two doors down was another shop. The owners of the other store had a son my age... and he was cute. Quite cute. And he was always nice to me. I liked him. I like-liked him. My (quasi)boyfriend had sort of drifted away during the school year and by that point was dating someone else, so I screwed up my courage to ask the boy from the store two doors down to go to the prom. Asked HIM to the prom... and he turned me down.
Teen Girl Brain does a lot of things with being turned down like that. 'What's wrong with me? Did I do something wrong? Am I not pretty enough, sexy enough, likable enough?" No actual heartbreak involved, but I had liked him and thought him cute and it was embarrassing and a blow to the ego to be turned down. And I still needed a date. I was the chairman of the prom committee so "not going" wasn't an option. (For whatever reason juniors were in charge of doing all the work in arranging the junior/senior prom. Don't know why. It was just how it was done). Ultimately, what I did was ask a college freshman who had graduated from my school a year earlier, a nice guy I was friends with who loved dances (and who I knew was totally gay. But I logically-- and accurately-- thought he would be a fun date. We'd have a good time, and...well... I wasn't risking my teen girl ego again by asking him out. If HE turned me down, no biggie. It was 'just for fun'.
Also, in teen girl brain, while being turned down for the prom by the cute guy I had really wanted to say yes was not much of a problem in the big scheme of things, a minor mark on the the chart of life, I also never totally forgot the moment of teen girl embarrassment.
So, back to the conversation that Mom and I were having about To Kill a Mockingbird, segregation, and naivete.
In the midst of the conversation, mom mentioned this prom date incident and how it had angered her because a few years later (totally unknown to myself) the mother of the boy who had turned me down told my mother that he had wanted to say yes when I had asked him to the prom, that he had liked me and had wanted to go but "he just couldn't" because it was the PUBLIC SCHOOL PROM.
Jaw drop and I'm faced with my own lack of vision.
"Whaaaaaat???"
Wait. Wait. Wait. Let me get this straight. He didn't go to the prom with me, not because he didn't like me but because it was an integrated prom???! In 1988?! Seriously?!
"Hold on," I said. "He didn't go because there would be black kids there?" (Brain full of WTF)
She said she thought it was less that he had thought "that" (sure he didn't) than that it would be felt to be "socially unacceptable at his school to go to the public school prom." That the "other kids" at his school would look down on HIM for going to my integrated school's prom.
Again, what the actual fuck.
I was gobsmacked.
My teen-aged memory self was gobsmacked.
The 17 year old girl's angst over "What did I do wrong? Am I not good enough/pretty enough/whatever enough for this cute guy?" was all egocentric nonsense. The actual truth had never once crossed my mind. Had never even come close. I had never imagined. Oh good grief, how blind was I to have never have thought...
I mean, come on. He attended that "private" school. He and his family had chosen to attend that school and yet, my thought process was so shallow that this was an explanation that had never crossed my mind.
How shallowly stupid of me.
However he and his mom explain it to themselves ("social pressure?" Pfft) this was out and out racism. Turns out, he and his friends were so racist that the thought of attending a desegregated prom (IN 1988!) was more than he could handle.
I just can't even.
Strange how a random sentence from your mom can re-write a bit of your own ancient history.
You know what, I'm damn happy I took my openly gay friend to the prom rather than the "cute guy" next door. In fact, I would like a time machine to go back and tell my teen self, who was embarrassed about having been turned down for a date, that what I really should have been embarrassed about was that I had ever asked him in the first place.
