Until I was eight or nine years old the neighborhood I grew up in on the east side of Columbus, Ohio was the kind of place where few people locked their doors at night. We were all lower middle class and mostly white. We knew almost every family that lived on our street by name. The neighborhood always felt safe and the threat of violence was something we didn’t even think about. We existed in a kind of bubble. Our city was already changing all around us but we were still experiencing only one, homogenous, story.
Life provided a few hints of stories that were different from our own during my days at Fairmoor Elementary School. Damon came to our school in the first grade. He was the first African-American I can remember meeting in person. Kids would run up to him and ask to touch his hair because the texture of it was different from their own. Although I'm sure this wasn't easy for Damon he was quickly accepted as "one of the guys" when kids realized although he looked different, he was really just like us.
Just a few weeks after the start of the third grade school year our principal introduced Sivaley (pronounced, sivil-lay) to our class. Sivaley was a shy Asian boy who didn't speak a single word of English. We discovered he and his family were refugees from war-torn Vietnam. At first Sivaley seemed so foreign to us that he may as well have been from another planet. He spent the first few weeks quietly taking it all in and drawing tanks and artillery on the blackboard, which reflected his daily reality before he immigrated to the US.
A few of my friends and I took Sivaley under our wings and made sure he had someone to hang out with during recess. I had a Superball, which was a small rubber ball that would bounce hundreds of feet in the air. This is the first time I remember seeing Sivaley relax and attempt to communicate. We connected on a basic human level. It was as though playing with the ball momentarily made him forget everything else that was running through his head and he was just a kid. I lost track of Sivaley after third grade and often wonder what became of him.
Our neighborhood changed swiftly and significantly at the start of the 1978-1979 school year. This was the year desegregation began in Columbus, Ohio. I'll never forget when the decision to start bussing students out of their home districts was announced on the radio that summer. We learned that starting the next school year everyone from our neighborhood would be bussed to schools in the worst parts of the city and the kids from those neighborhoods would attend schools in our neighborhood. I remember that day vividly, the parents around me seemed bewildered and upset. As a child of nine my stomach felt like it was twisted into knots, I was terrified.
The first day of fourth grade I realized it was only a fifteen minute school bus ride to a completely different world. The driver, Mrs. Love, (that was really her name) greeted us with a smile as we boarded her bus. The stereo blasted 1970’s funk music the entire way to Fair Avenue School. As we approached the school I saw dilapidated Victorian mansions that were boarded up, yards overgrown with weeds, and trash littering the streets.
The first few days were uncomfortable and were a culture shock on many levels. This was my first immersion in a story different from my own. With each day it got easier. Forty years later, I still consider the education I received at this school in the middle of the ghetto, from the curriculum and otherwise, was among the best I ever had in my life.
By the time I started ninth grade at Eastmoor High School in 1984 our own neighborhood was undergoing a transformation. It was the height of the crack epidemic and factions of gangs from larger cities, including the L.A. Crips, had started to move into the east side of Columbus.
Law enforcement wasn't prepared and refused to admit there was a gang problem. In the days and months that followed our neighborhood quickly succumbed. Our part of town became a haven for drug dealing, prostitution, and unbelievable violence. Every family that could afford to do so moved away to the suburbs. Those of us who remained became the minority.
As my teenage years went by I met and spent time with many different people of many different backgrounds and races. Admittedly, sometimes it was difficult. In the end, the lesson I learned is there are good and bad people from every race and walk of life. When everything is stripped away people are pretty much people and the only real measure of a person is their character. Now that I’ve become an adult I appreciate exposure to all these different perspectives. This experience enriched my adult life in ways that I could never have imagined. Today, as I visit new countries and cultures my main goal is to learn to see the world through their eyes.
There is a great divide in our country and our world at large today. There is so much hate and fear, not just between races and classes but now there's the hate of anyone who holds an opinion different from our own. What many fail to realize is how extremely vulnerable this hate and fear makes us. Throughout history corrupt leaders and governments who support them have both inflamed and exploited hate and fear for their own nefarious purposes. Today we are being exploited much more than ever.
The gulf that exists between us and those things and people we’ve learned to hate and fear only exists within the confines of our own minds. There is an antidote for this. The first step to building the bridge is to step outside your comfort zone and realize that in this great wide world there many more stories than just our own. Each of us have the opportunity to be both a student and a teacher in this life. We must have open minds, teach our stories and be willing to learn the stories of others before we rush to judgment.
Familiarity doesn't always breed contempt, it can also breed compassion and understanding. That understanding can give us great power. When we can finally open our minds to this maybe we can begin to reclaim the power from those who wish to manipulate us for their own gain. Only then will the true healing begin.
With Gratitude,
~Eric Vance Walton~
*I am an American novelist, poet, traveler, and crypto-enthusiast. If you’ve enjoyed my work please sign up for my author newsletter at my website. Newsletter subscribers will receive exclusive updates and special offers and your information will never be sold or shared.
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