The Highland Park Hood

by Aaron Freeman

When people ask me where in Highland Park I live I usually say "da south side." That said, I've no particular idea of what it's like being a Negro in Highland Park. I experience CHP as the neighbor of Tom and Linda and Susan and Paul. For me Highland Park is the library, the Botanic Gardens and Breadsmiths. It is the Chabad house and the worlds nicest post office. I am sure my skin color and people's reaction to it suffuses my Highland Park world. For all I know my neighbors define "nigger" as "My friend Aaron who just left the room." For me however the city's racism is not a potent brew.

I note that Mannequins in downtownstores are rarely brown; that Black Entertainment Television is not among our cable options, and that the darker the person's skin the more likely they are to be wearing some kind of work uniform. But an American Negro's whole life is a history of the indignities and as indignities go these hardly merit mention.

Not that blatant racism doesn't occasionally snarl up and remind me of a darker HP. I have relatives who, on visits here from Jamaica, found themselves tracked like Eric Rudolph through several tawny Central Avenue shops. Unused as they were to the ways of American prejudice they were flattered by the attention and did nor realize they were suspects. When they got back to my house and told their shopping tales I felt obliged to set them straight as to the "real" nature of store security's concern for them.

A man who was ostensibly a fan walked up tome in what is now Dominick's but was then - sigh - Byerly's and asked why I was not "... on the south side with the brothers." I told him there were not enough of my Jewish brothers on the south side for my comfort. The good news is that despite its internal reputation for materialistic airheadedness, HP seems no more problematic a place to have brown skin than anywhere else in America.

One reason is that there are so few brown Highland Parkers you have to count the suntanned Norweigens to get a decent basketball game. The only other resident Negro I know is my wife and she's not even African American, she's from Jamaica. (I know JA is geographically American but their accents are too distinct for me to include them in the club.) There are obviously other brown people in the HP but to my knowlege there is nothing like a brown "community." Try as I might I have failed to forge a skin color brotherhood with Michael Jordan.

That I don't experience myself as a Negro in HP owes much to the ubiquitous nature of American racism. An American Negro's whole life is a history of the indignities. On one hand racism is like water, so common and present that you can't see or even imagine the nation without it. On the other hand because racism is so common and as painful have developed over my 43 years potent though expensive defenses against its worst effects.

I also employ various strategies to seem harmless. The theory being that fear inspires hatred and discrimination. The less of the former I inspire the less of the later I will suffer. I am aware for example, that no man walking down the street joking with his children scared anyone. Similarly no one is frightened by a man carrying flowers or playing Frisbee. If I can find aflower power frisbee to toss with my kids I'll be welcome anywhere in the nation.

My most potent defense against ever-present racism is just like the great blessing of Egypt, denial. In the face of racism I take the approach of sergeant Schultz of the 1960 sitcom "Hogan's Heroes," "I see nothing... nothing!" Mine is the attitude that would have urged Rosa Parks to "Go ahead, let the pale guy have your seat. Why make a big deal about it?" I'd have asked Martin Luther King, "What's really more important, garbage men in Memphis or quality time with your family?"

This is a very expensive defense because it leads me to the borderline immoral position of not fighting fights that should be fought. At a cul-de-sac party last summer a neighbor explained to me in hushed and knowing tones that Highland Park high school had a gang problem because of "blacks and Hispanics from the city." I should have said, "Oh you mean like me?" Instead I nibbled more spinach dip. I find denial worth the price because it allows me to be and be know as a happy camper. I am considered a posterchild for good cheer and positive vibes. Jews believe that creation is an ongoing act in which we partner with G-d. I wish to create a man as much as is possible in America, free of racist baggage and in so doing contribute to a non racist world just like on Star Trek.

Perhaps the most important elements of our conscious lives are those we ignore. We are aware of our beating heartbeats, eye blinking, of the state of our buttocks in the chair we'd have little time left for truly important like channel surfing. I deny racism so as to live life.

Even more than denying racism I strive to avoid the easy and invisible assumptions of my racist culture. I rarely use the term "black" when referring to people with brown skin. I do so not just because black does not describe the color of Negro skin - with the possible exception of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, not merely because black and "white" implies a greater difference between people than actually exists but because not using the popular inaccuracies forces me to think before I define a person in terms of her saturation of melanin. Rejection of black and white requires me to make more lively and provocative description. It allows me to fight the racist within me one sentence at a time.

My strategies are so ingrained, so completely a part of my being that I am no longer consciously aware of them. I do not deny racism, I am denial. I define harmless. My children do not go to school in Highland Park. Our decision to send them to Chicago's magnet system was only peripherally related to my or their (substantially lighter) skin color. They're in the Chicago system because we are convinced Chicago's academics are stronger. We are not unaware that for example, that the percentage of poor kids in Highland Park's system is .03. This of course begs the question of where the heck did that .03 percent come from?

My daughters, the goddesses, are at least half Brittmutt. Their mom is English/Irish/Scotch whatever. I am sure they don't think of themselves as Negroes. I don't consider them Negroes either. To do so would violate my "one drop rule;" if you have one drop of non-Negro blood you are not in the club, you can only come to my Kwaanza party with an escort. We want them to go to a school that looks more like the world in which they will live and work, we make sure they study Spanish. We do not want it to be novel for them to befriend poor people of any color. To a certain extent we hope to avoid escape race problems by educating them the city.

I have a clear sense of what it is to be a Jew in Highland Park. Not because Judaism is a more profound aspect of my identity but because it demands more of my everday life. I can list the synagogues I'm comfortable in and which ones I wouldn't go into to escape the Klan. I know which restaurants are kosher and which ones it's a sin to even drive by.

Our home is virtually indistinguishable from that of any other north shore Jew. There are mezuzahs on our doorposts, Shabbat candles in the kitchen drawers and Debbie Friedman recordings in the CD tower.

What I love most about Judaism is the religion's insistance on gratitue for the miracles that are our lives. To live in to live on the north shore Highland Park, is a great blessing is a blesing almost beyond my comprehension.

I have an advantage over many Highland Parkers interms of my capacity for gratitude. I am old enough to remember "real" discrimination. As a child in the 1960's I say sign announcing drinking fountains. When I was the age of my seven year old daughters it was to me inconceivable that I could safely walk through a place like Highland Park unless I was dressed as a chauffeur or butler or some similar servant. As I stroll through the Botanic Garden, browse the library and avail myself of the gasatronomic joys of Sunset Foods I know that it does not have to be like this. That but for the grace of G-d I am somewhere else somewhere less peaceful, less beautiful, less secure.

I have no particular idea of what it's like to be a Negro in Highland Park I know very well what it's like to be Aaron Freeman in here. It feels like a blessing for which I thank G-d.

 

© 2001 Aaron Freeman