CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Racial Relations

I arrived at the Manson Street house slightly early on Friday the 28th, but the rattletrap was already waiting for me, loaded to the gunnels with boxes, bags, and children.  It seemed to groan beneath the weight of several mattresses tied onto its roof, and the leftward list was more pronounced than ever.

Ray and children erupted from the car and eagerly watched me unlock the door.  We went upstairs, and after a quick look round I handed the keys to Ray and left them to it.

By February 22nd, I still hadn’t received a rental voucher from the Department of Social Services.  I heaved a gusty sigh when I heard that Ray’s case worker was none other than Mrs. Planet.  She must have moved up to the “M” section of the alphabet.

"Did you send in a rental certificate?" Mrs. Planet asked, when I finally reached her.

"Nooooo."

"Gotta have a #rental certificate from the City," she announced in a rather triumphant-sounding tone, "before we can send out vouchers for rent."

"What is a rental certificate, how do I get one, and from which department?" I asked.  "And how come D.S.S. didn't tell me they needed one before this?"

"Dunno.  Probably because you never had a new D.S.S. tenant before?  But call the building inspector. Send us a rental certificate, and we'll send you a voucher for the #rent."

I called the Schemmerhorn building inspector’s office.  It was much easier getting through to their ofices than to the caseworkers at D.S.S.

"Sure," they said.  "Come in, pay a ten-dollar fee for each #apartment you want inspected, fill out a form, and we'll call you to set up an appointment."

I asked if they could mail me the form to fill out and I would mail it back to them with a check. 

On hearing this request, the friendliness slipped slightly.  This was most irregular.  They didn’t normally do that.

I explained that I worked in St. Albans and couldn’t make it to Schemmerhorn during office hours.

Well . . . in that case . . . they supposed they could.

The form arrived two days later.  I filled it out and mailed it back with a check for $10.00.

The #building #inspector – not Mr. Bray this time, but an equally young-sounding, go-ahead man by the name of Ron – called a couple of days later.  I made an appointment for him to meet Wim at the #house the following week.  Unfortunately, this appointment had to be scheduled for the day after Mr. Catcher was inspecting the apartment for the #security #agreement.  Wim would be making two trips to Schemmerhorn, but it couldn’t be helped.

The #inspection by Mr. Catcher went off without a hitch.  The apartment was clean and safe.  As for Ron, the building inspector, Wim and he got on like a house on fire.  Recognizing kindred spirits in each other, they no doubt had fun discussing building techniques and #codes.  I sent the resulting rental certificate to Mrs. Planet at the Department of Social Services, poste haste.

It took about one month for Miz James to start complaining about Ray.

"That #tenant of yours!" she puffed into the telephone.  "I was hoping it was going to stop after a while, but it hasn't."

"What hasn’t?" I asked.

"His kids make fun of my kids all the time, callin' them racial names an' stuff.  Every time they go out, they have to hear it from them kids.  They're always outside, cussin' and messin' up the yard.  I wan' a fence put up so my keeds can be in the yard by theirselves."

Coincidentally, just that past weekend, I had taken a class on ethics-in-the-workplace and watched a dated but very interesting video documentary about an experiment in discrimination.  At an all-white school in an all-white town in the South- or Mid-West – I don’t remember which – the pupils had literally never encountered a black person, and one of the teachers decided that her class of ten-year-olds could benefit from experiencing first-hand what it was like to be discriminated against. 

At first, the children thought it sounded like a fun exercise, but they soon realized it was anything but.

The teacher sorted her students into two groups: the blue-eyed group and the brown-eyed group.  The first day, the blue-eyed children were informed that they were superior to the brown-eyed ones and that brown-eyed people were stupid and lazy.  Unlike the blue-eyed children, the brown-eyed children weren’t allowed to have seconds at lunch or to play for an extra five minutes at recess.  Any mistakes the brown-eyed children made in their lessons were pointed out to the blue-eyed children and ridiculed.  They were also made to wear collars so as to be easily identified as brown-eyed children from a distance, so that the blue-eyed children could easily avoid them.

It was amazing how quickly the blue-eyed children turned into utterly hateful, spiteful creatures.  They were soon taunting the brown-eyed children and making their lives a misery.  Several fights broke out in the playground.

On the next day, the roles were reversed.  The brown-eyed group was now superior to the blue-eyed group.  While taking some joy in now being the favored ones, the brown-eyed children were not as horrid to the now be-collared blue-eyed children as the blue-eyed children had been to them.  This was obviously because the brown-eyed children remembered what it had felt like to be discriminated against themselves. 

Another interesting point was that performance scores in reading and logic were better when the children were deemed superior than when they were considered inferior, thus proving that self-image can affect performance.

Anyway . . . "I'm sorry to hear you're having some trouble with Ray's kids," I told Miz James.  "I'll certainly write a letter to him today about the racial remarks.  Also, I'll talk to Wim about putting a fence up in the back yard.  I guess that would be a good idea, anyway."

"Okay," Miz James said in a grudging manner.  "But tha’s not all."

"Oh?"

"Those kids of Ray's . . . they take up the whole front porch.  I come home an' have to climb over them to get to my front door.  It's not right when a person can’t even make it to their own front door without fallin’ over people.  Maybe you should think about putting up a fence dividing the front porch, too."

This was a bit much.  "I don’t know about that,” I said, “but, as I said, I'll speak to Wim."

"And," Miz James continued, "the older daughter . . . Jennie?  She's real trouble.  Comes home on the weekends and raises all kinds a hell.  She's like fourteen goin' on twenty, that one, if you know what ah mean?"

I tried to sound soothing and understanding, but was finding this increasingly more difficult to do.  

“I'm sorry to hear that, Ms. James.  She's a problem child, you know?  She’s run away from home a few times.  That's why she has to live in a children's home."

"Tha’s all very well."  Miz James sighed heavily into the phone.  "But she's trouble an' I don't see why we should have to put up with it."

I broke in as she paused for breath.  "I will write to Ray and try to set him straight.  If the #racial remarks don't stop, maybe you could sue.”

"Humph."  Miz James didn’t sound at all mollified.  “An’ another thing before you go.  The water heater downstairs is leaking.”

Fantastic.  What did those run?  A few hundred dollars?  I added it to Wim’s to-do list.

Miz James finally let me go. 

With a sigh, I hung up the phone and started working on a letter to Ray.