Three second-grade boys gathered by the chain link fence that divided the two school yards.
On the other side, four year old Hannah stopped to catch her breath after running and winning a short race. She was proud that she outran all the boys.
With her usual sense of curiosity, Hannah looked at the small group of second graders in the school yard next door.
“Dirty Kike.”
The words flew over the fence atop stones the boys hurled at her.
Hannah, who had never heard these words before, Instantly knew what they meant, not by definition, but by connotation. She knew they were hurled on wings of hatred, imitated, not created by the boys. Soon, however, they would internalize and own the hate. She knew this. How? As an adult she might tell you thoughts and feelings are energy fields. If you pay attention, you can read the field and know what you have not learned.
Were the roots of the diversity sown that day?
Or was it when…
Her father stopped at a drugstore as he drove through the heart of Roxbury with Mom and siblings in tow for a visit to Tante Laya (yiddish for aunt Lilian). He instructed Hannah to go in and buy – whatever it was. She walked through the doorway, the only and a small white presence among a group of adult black men.
Or was it when…
As a high school student she petitioned the school committee to allow her all white community to participate in METCO, a voluntary “busing” program that brought inner city students to high quality suburban schools. Her letter of appeal had nothing to do with fairness or a bleeding liberal heart. It had everything to do with her sense that she was ill-prepared to live in the world out there beyond the circumference of her lily white town.
Or was it when…
During a family vacation in Florida she and her youngest sister stayed longer at the beach, thinking there must be a bus they could take back to the house her family was renting. They boarded the bus to find a sea of black faces – The Help – staring at the unusual sight of two white girls walking the aisle to take the two empty seats.
Or was it when…
She heard the story of her father refusing to participate when his WWII comrades smoked half a cigarette and stomped on the unused remains in front of German prisoner’s of war who begged for a smoke. Instead, he gave them the unsmoked remains because it was “dehumanizing” to them and to himself to do as his comrades did.
Where do the roots of diversity begin?
Hannah wonders.
Do you know?