LizaWasHere

Until the day I posted about it — was it Friday? — I hadn’t given my high school reunion more than 2 minutes of thought.

Those two minutes of thought were guilt-ridden and icky. After the Significant Challenges of our 10 year reunion, like lots of people not being invited, including most of my friends, and also having it over 4th of July weekend 2 blocks from Milwaukee’s Summerfest grounds, I said I would help do the next one.

Then I moved away. And now I’m mom to a toddler. Yeah, not so much with the time to volunteer.

BUT, I emailed the email addresses of everyone I could find to the person who sent a “do you know anyone in the class of 87″ to the class of 86 yahoogroup. And every day since then I’ve sent her another address of someone else I’ve just remembered that I have their address.

(Aside to the person in Minnesota who I don’t think wants me to name names here — the last email I have from you says that you are about to change jobs and will send me your new email address when you get settled. That was about a week before Noah was born.)

Have I mentioned that I went to a very interesting high school?

I didn’t know it at the time, of course. It was just high school. But Rufus King was one of the grand educational experiments of the 70s and 80s that actually worked more-or-less as idealistically imagined. At least for me.

First, it was really integrated. I just counted through the senior class pictures, and of the 225 pictures, there are ~4 more white people than people of color. Roughly 98% of those people of color are African-American or biracial with African-American and white parents.

In the spirit of honesty, I can’t claim it was a particularly integrated experience, although it probably was more than most.

My classes were mostly white — I remember there being 3 people of color in nearly all of my classes (Hi Madelaine! And Michele and Alan!) with double that in Spanish (Hi Lynn & Tracy) and a few more in English (Dave, Marnya, Lisa)….

Looking at the pictures, it gets more complicated. I have only the vaguest of memories of most of the African-Americans. A few I still know, a few more I remember well, but the majority either look familiar, or look…unfamiliar.

A few stand out from beyond my classes — eccentric characters who had gone to the feeder middle school with my friends (Kelly and Ike?), a few others who went to the same magnet elementary school where I went (Michelle & Willie).

The most telling thing is in the class polls. I had no idea who the girl who won most unforgettable was. I thought it was a joke. But no.

It was someone who managed to graduate on time, in spite of having — I was told — 4 children during high school. I don’t know whether or not that’s true, but of course if it is, and you knew her, it certainly is unforgettable. I just don’t think I ever met the young woman. Unless she was in Personal Typing with me in 9th grade, I’m pretty sure our class schedules were mutually exclusive.

As I write all of this, what comes clear is that there was “pretty good” racial integration in my high school, but more limited class integration, and practically no integration across both race AND class.

The people of color in my classes nearly all went to and graduated from college. Many went on to graduate or professional school. I think that was the case of most of the people who went to King, all races included.

Was race “just” one factor along which high school cliques broke down? Something tells me it couldn’t have been that simple.

What about class?

There were maybe three loose cluster categories in terms of class (I think this is true for both whites and people of color, although probably the distribution looks different):

1. People from families like mine, where our parents expected us to go, most likely to a private college, most likely without financial aid.
2. People from middle to slightly upper middle class families, where our parents were clear that we were going to college, but if it wasn’t Wisconsin or Minnesota, we better be getting a good financial aid package.
3. People from working to middle class families where if the financial aid package, probably at a local or state school, wasn’t big enough, then they were joining the military first and going to college on the GI bill. Or maybe later.

I don’t know how much class integration there was among the African-American students, socially.

And now that I think about it, I don’t know how much there was among the white students, either. At least not the mainstream(s).

Within the geeks (I was a geek), there was a lot of social integration, both race and class. A tiny handful of us lived in my neighborhood (Hi again, Madelaine!), but we spread out pretty far across the class spectrum. That was the biggest blessing of magnet schools. There were enough geeky smart kids that we could have a nice social life too.

A few of the less or non geeky African Americans seemed to have social mobility — Lynn, Tracy, LaTanya. I also had some, although not including the non-geeks of my own social class. I wonder why about both of those things.

We didn’t communicate well outside of the geek divide. I am pretty sure that in the 4 years of high school, I didn’t exchange 25 words with either boy in my class who lived on my block. Including the one whose parents were friends with mine. They were “soccer studs” and for some reason, I found them utterly and insurmountably intimidating.
I did talk to the one who lived around the block, but his parents were such close friends with mine that we shared Thanksgivings and Christmas Eves. And even so, Eric and I barely acknowledged each other while we were actually at school.

Anyway, classmates (and teachers!) and perhaps more objective readers, I’m curious about your impressions, corrections, opinions, etc. But if I don’t go to sleep, I’ll start hallucinating.