“That was a dumb n----- trick.” The use of the “n” word was a commonplace where I spent four years teaching in Watts at David Starr Jordan High School on the corner of 103^rd and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles. But it was hearing one of my pupils say that to another in my presence that told me the kids had accepted me; that they knew color was not a factor in my being there, that it was not a factor in our teacher/pupil relationship. But it also made me aware of how certain words make their way into a population and in time loses their real meaning and intent. We hope there are parents and grandparents, a society that would teach children the meaning of such words. Too often this is not the case.

Being a Caucasian teacher in an all Negro school in an all Negro community during the 60s taught me things in race relations unlearnable in any other environment. For example, the first week on the job one of the girls in my homeroom turned up missing and I learned she had been stabbed to death by another girl in a fight over a boy. Another example of the school environment in which I was to spend four years and become a tenured teacher was the principal telling me drugs were not a problem, this despite the fact they were all-pervasive and dealers had free access to the school without fear of intervention. But the principal was quite correct, drugs were not a problem; the problem was the kind of violence like a girl killing another over a boy that was the problem. The principal had put things in perspective for me; the evil of drugs was vastly overshadowed by the evil of violence endemic to the school and community of Watts.

To be sure, the dealing and use of drugs added to such a violent environment; but the real problem promoting this endemic violence was the hopelessness of anything changing for the better for those that found themselves trapped in a place like Watts, a place where the hundreds of teenagers I dealt with knew how very hopeless their situation was. It was a hopelessness that bred violence, a lashing out at an enemy unseen and unknown, but one that was relentless in keeping opportunity for anything better out of reach.

I’ve written so much about the things I learned while teaching in ghetto and barrio schools it is with great difficulty I approach the subject once more. I cannot but somewhat envy Kurt Vonnegut whose writings so many of us admire now being relieved of the toil. As much as anyone he understood the labors of the writer compelled to write because “that is what we do.” But in most cases, as Thoreau mentioned writers have only the pain of their labors as their reward.

But for those of us who not only write but are compelled by conscience to write, there is always the hope we can make a difference. While this flies in the face of the facts, I’m compelled to continue the seemingly never ending story of the kind of hopelessness so many face simply because by accident of birth they drew the wrong card from the deck of fate.

The issues now being discussed about race because of the Imus and Duke cases brought many things to mind, things I would far rather have relegated to the past and never relive in memory again, let alone write about. But there they are, as vivid as though they had only happened yesterday.

One of my pupils in fear of his life brought a rifle to school. He went to the office and asked if the school secretary would please keep it for him so he could pick it up again at the end of the school day. He tried to explain he needed the gun for safety walking to and from school, and could not understand why the secretary refused his request. In a school where the dropout rate was nearly 75%, not the advertised 15% necessary to cook the books for state and federal aid and the ADA was a flagrant fraud teachers were forced to commit, it was remarkable to me this young fellow took his education so seriously he was willing to risk his life even coming to school at all.

Very few people can relate to this young fellow; very few can relate to what was a reasonable request on his part under such circumstances. But I lived it for four years on a daily basis in an environment where teachers and pupils were armed, and violence was a part of our everyday lives. It was only when I had to face down one of the real criminals gun in hand that I finally determined I had to resign. Had I killed the criminal threatening me that would have been the end anyway. And had he killed me, what would my family get? Flowers from the school district?

The great advantage I had enabling me to be a successful teacher those four years at Jordan was the fact I was a shop teacher. When I went to the interview at the district headquarters I was told English and History teachers were dime-a-dozen. But when the interviewer discovered my twelve years in the aerospace industry qualified for my teaching vocational classes, I became a hot commodity. This would enable the district to draw from the vast resources of federal money available to schools like Jordan for vocational classes. Much of the fraud I eventually discovered in the schools had to do with this availability of federal funds. And the ease with which school districts can cook the books made “If the money is simply lying there, why not take it,” frankly, quite unbelievable.

But equally unbelievable was why the school district would send a lovely young blonde to Jordan as her first teaching assignment. She lasted a full three days. It was when a large bolt was thrown at her barely missing her head and breaking the blackboard at which she had been writing that ended things.

I spent a lot of frustrating time to no avail attempting to make some of these things known to those in authority. I even sat down with State Senator Ed Davis in Sacramento for a long chat about some of these things. We had a good relationship established when he was Chief of the L.A.P.D. But I was saddened to learn Ed had become a politician, and as such there was no help to be found through him or any of the others in Sacramento.

Equally frustrating was the experience I gained by sending some of this information to William Raspberry. He seemed excited until he learned I was Caucasian; and that was the end of our correspondence. I understood; after all, what could a Caucasian know of the “black experience.” Well, quite a lot as it turns out. But there was no use trying to convince Raspberry of this, even though the FBI thought I had something to contribute.

While we had a plainclothes L.A.P.D. working the campus of Jordan, a man with whom I had a deep friendship, there was no quelling the violence. But we both understood the root cause of the violence, the profound despair of anything ever becoming better for the people in Watts. They were a political nonentity before the riots, and they remained a political nonentity after the riots, and notwithstanding the abortive attempts by some few like Cleaver and Malcolm X only the charlatans like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would come to the fore to “represent” Negroes.

I found things no better in East San Jose, where the cops were called to the campus of Yerba Buena High School 90 times during my first ten weeks teaching there. But there was a profound difference in the kinds of racial hatreds, not only due to the number of illegal aliens but the great influx of Asian pupils resulting from the politically contrived tragic disaster of Vietnam. As a math teacher, I experienced first hand the difference between a Mexican culture that despised education and the Asian that put a premium on education. Adding to the witch’s brew of the school district was having a Negro Superintendent and a Hispanic principal. During one faculty meeting, the Superintendent who was the chief speaker asked for a glass of water. The head of our teacher’s union, a Caucasian, hollered out to the principal, “Hey, Hernandez, you get it. You’re his water boy!”

Having been born in Weedpatch and spending my childhood in Southeast Bakersfield, Little Oklahoma, throughout a lifetime spent in so many environments where racism is a commonplace I’ve experienced a lot of discrimination. Whether the “n” word or “white trash” and “Okie,” any number of words and phrases that hurt, through all of this I’ve known the good and the bad people irrespective of race. But how is it, we find ourselves asking, that the bad people seem to consistently have the upper hand?

Among the many things about race I have learned along the way is the fact that while working in aerospace as a machinist and engineer race was not a factor. The fellow running a lathe or mill might be Jewish, Negro, Caucasian, but we got along because we all had jobs, and with those jobs we had hope for our families and our future. But we were also Americans, and we had the hope of most Americans of that era that there was a future for us and our families. I suppose if there is to be a bottom line to what is happening now because of Imus/Duke it is one of both economics and what it means to be an American first, and everything else subordinate to that. However, that requires the kind of hope those my age had those years ago when we had a heritage, culture, and language that bound us together as Americans with a national identity.

But there can be no hope of a satisfactory resolution, no answer to who is going to put out the fire when such a trail of slime leads to the White House like a “missing” 5 million emails that will not be accounted for, so long as corruption is rife in our Congress, as long as millions of Mexicans invade America for the sake of slave labor, and so on.

While chatting with a friend yesterday, a recovering alcoholic, it once more occurred to me no one who has not experienced the addiction can possibly understand the hellish kind of prison such addicts make for themselves, the kind of lunacy they live with every day of their lives. Likewise, those who have not experienced the kind of hopeless despair to be found in places like Watts can possibly understand such a thing. But most people should be able to understand the German fellow I worked with in the shops following WWII telling me that before Hitler his family was starving, but after Hitler came to power there were meat and potatoes once more.

Americans are beginning to demand that order be restored in our nation. But I don’t trust the present leadership to do the things necessary to restore order in America. What we hope for, what we must work for is the kind of order that does not invite another Hitler to take advantage of the deteriorating economic conditions millions of Americans are facing that robs us of hope for a future for our nation and our children.