I now think of the metaphor of slamming a picture frame on the floor and apologizing to it. It does no good - the frame is still broken; the glass is in shards. No matter how meticulously I try to repair the frame, it will always carry scars.
I grew up in a white lower income neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania called Elliott. I lived on Crucible street, near the dead end. It wasn't a complete dead end, there were stairs that took you down the steep hillside to the intersection of Steuben Street and Chartiers Avenue. That was where the West End began. That was where the black folks lived.
My father was a bigot and he had a derogatory term for every race and ethnicity. Irish were Micks; Jews were goddamn Jewish bastards; Polish were stupid Polocks; Italians were Dego Wops; all orientals were Chinks. He had two main names for blacks: jungle-bunnies, when I was within earshot, and the "n" word, when he thought I couldn't hear him. Dad was everything a man should not be: a drunk, a wife beater, and a bigot.
My friends were all white and we went to the Catholic grade school. At little league, I met my first black man. He was Mr. West, our coach, and he had a son named Johnny. At that time, Johnny was seven, too. Soon after I started little league, my mom left my dad and we moved. Instead of the dead end, we were now near the "Elliott Bluff." Johnny lived up there and I would sleep over at his house and watch horror movies. We were kids and it was fun.
This was my insulated world - not because I wanted to avoid blacks, but because my reality avoided blacks. This fits Plato's allegory of the cave. If your experiences are limited, then so are your aspirations. Plato's cave expresses "the effect of education and the lack of it on our true nature." There are many pursuits in education, and through my life, I did not pursue black history. This is despite working in Selma, Alabama or even a block away from Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
No one has talked about it much, but the United States, my perceived world, has been segregated. Blacks were in their neighborhoods, with their shops, restaurants, and churches, and whites were everywhere else. At one time, I justified it that blacks wanted to be isolated. For a smart guy, I was stupidly naive. It never dawned on me that the fear that I have, as a white man, travelling into a black neighborhood, is exactly the same fear that blacks have travelling into white neighborhoods. We can't have a proper conversation if our only commonality is fear. Blacks and whites, we both need to fight the fear and start having conversations.
In the past, I attributed the deaths of blacks to police as one-offs. I now realize that it isn't. I also realize that we need to get everyone out of their caves. That is where we can see what is possible and place our aspirations on higher standards. It will be a long road and I'm afraid that it will take longer than I have left on this earth to realize, but I plan to help as long as I am able.
I firmly believe that education is the key to maintaining the longevity necessary to see equality through. That doesn't mean one education for one set of people and another set for the others. It means that we all have a story to tell in this narrative and we must express it. Our education is about one another, and a little bit of education about ourselves - I had no idea the scope of fear that a black man had just coming to work, nor the heartbreak that a black mom has when her child doesn't want to be black anymore. All of these voices need to be recorded and written down. Even the white guys that only knew one black kid while growing up, like me.
Again, I'm sorry - let's talk.
Steve Scheider
