I grew up at a boarding school in Oklahoma called Chilocco
Indian School. My parents were employees of the school and we lived right there on campus. For school, all the employees kids attended a public school about 10-12 miles away. A bus from the public school would transport us back and forth each day.
Growing up I don't really ever recall experiencing prejudice or
racism outright, not blatantly directed at me anyway. I recogized it with some of the black kids that attended school there. But as for me not really. If it was subtle I missed that, too.
I think one reason for that was I was always involved with athletics and hung around mostly with other athletes thus creating sort of a buffer or bubble that shielded me somewhat from that ugliness.
Then we moved to Sisseton, SD in 1972 when I was a
sophomore in high school. What a culture shock that was.
Initially in the sense it was backward, backward in the form
of being behind the times. It seems I had stepped back in time. Still, school wise, not that much different from Oklahoma. That was soon about to change.
I got my first direct taste of racism during basketball season
that winter. Though I still participated in athletics, it was less a buffer than it was in Oklahoma. I was dating a girl at
the time and there was a party after one of our games. We
agreed to go and she agreed to let me pick her up at her
house - big mistake. I went to pick her up and her dad
greeted me at the door. I can still remember the conversation verbatim. I asked, "is Julie here? He
answered, "yes". I then asked, "is she ready to go to the
party?". He answered back, "she won't be going to no party", and closed the door. A bit bafflled I went back home. My dad asked why I was back home already and I
explained to him what had happened. He then spent the next 30-45 minutes explaining how things worked in Sisseton, and the rest of South Dakota. I guess he'd hoped
things had changed in the 30 years he had been gone.
Probably the saddest part about the whole thing, though, was that the girl was totally unaware of how her dad felt. Over the years, on occassion, I"ve wondered how she is doing.
