LITMIR.BIZ

      OF COURSE, THERE were a few exceptions to the racialized tracking scheme at Stokes and throughout the Nashville public schools. Typically there would be one or two black females in the enrichment classes but rarely ever a black male. One of the black females in particular is worth reflecting upon, as her experience demonstrates quite clearly the absurdity of racism as a national and even global phenomenon. During that fifth grade year, she was the one black student who was consistently placed in the advanced track. Her name was Rudo Nderere, and she and her family had recently come to the United States from Zimbabwe, arriving, if memory serves, before it actually became Zimbabwe—when it had still been Rhodesia, a racist, white supremacist and apartheid state, much like South Africa.

      White teachers loved Rudo, and on several occasions I would hear them commenting upon how intelligent she was (which was true), and how articulate she was (also true), and how lovely her accent was (absolutely inarguable, as the Southern African accent is among the most pleasant in the world). But of course there were also native-born blacks in that school, and in those same teachers’ classrooms, who were every bit as brilliant and articulate. But the teachers rarely saw that, which is why their astonishment at Rudo’s articulateness was so implicitly racist: it suggested that such a characteristic was somehow foreign to black people, that the ability to speak well was a white trait that no black person had ever managed to possess before.

      In any event, what was fascinating about the way Rudo was viewed in that Nashville middle school is how utterly different the perception of her—the very same her, with the same intelligence, accent, and ability to string words together in coherent sentences—would have been, and indeed had been in her native country. In Rhodesia, from which place she had just recently departed, she would have been seen as inferior, no matter her genius. She would have been a second-class citizen, her opportunities constrained, all because of color. But in America, she could be viewed as exotic, as different, as capable. She could be contrasted with local black folks who were perceived as less capable, as aggressive, as uninterested in education, as inferior.

      Many years later I would realize the process at work here—the way that foreign-born blacks are often played off against native-born African Americans in a way that has everything to do with racism and white supremacy. Reading a story in my local paper about a white church in town that had been working with Sudanese refugees to help them find jobs, child care, and various social services, I was struck by one of the statements made by the church’s pastor. When asked why the church had gone to such lengths to help African migrants, but had never done similar outreach with local black families in need of the same opportunities, the pastor noted that in some ways it was probably because the Africans were so grateful to be here. They had chosen to come, after all. They had wanted to be like us, like Americans. Native-born black folks on the other hand had made no such choice, and they regularly contested the dominant narrative about what America means and has long meant. African Americans, in other words, were pushy and demanding, and felt entitled (imagine that) to the fruits of their prodigious labors throughout the generations. But African immigrants were joiners, wanting nothing more than the opportunity to partake in the American dream. They serve as validation for the greatness of the country; they give the lie to the notion that the U.S. is a place where racism still exists. After all, were it so, why would any of them move here? That Irish and Italian and Jewish migrants had long before come to America, despite the prejudices they knew they might well face in their adopted countries—in other words, they had come for economic opportunity, racial and ethnic bias notwithstanding, much as Africans sometimes do now—seems to escape us.

      That one place may be preferable to another in terms of opportunity says little about whether that first place is as equitable as it should be. But for many white Americans, like those teachers at Stokes, the presence of someone like Rudo confirmed everything they needed to believe about their nation. She was like a soothing balm, allowing them not only to push away concerns about institutional racism, but also to avoid confronting their own biases, which played out against the other black students in their classes every day.