Halloween as History Lesson

This is my first day back at work after a weeklong vacation. I expected at least 1,500 e-mails when I logged on to my work computer this morning. But a message from my boss made my jaw drop.

Every year my colleagues at the state agency at which I work dress up for Halloween and compete in a chili cookoff. This year my boss suggested that we dress up in 1950s style, a la “Happy Days.” The women would wear poodle skirts and sweaters with pony tails. The men would wear pompadours, duck tails, leather jackets, and jeans.

After closing my mouth, my first thought was, “HELL NO!”

I sent copies of the e-mail to my siblings. My older brother advised that I “just say no.” Indeed, I am doing just that.

My older sister T1 was blunter. She said the ‘50s “were not great for black people.”

That is true. The 1950s were a bleak period of African-American history. Jim Crow was thriving. Emmett Till, a young black teen, was brutally murdered in August 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Four months later on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat at the front of the “colored section” to a white passenger. Her arrest prompted Montgomery, Alabama’s, black community to launch a successful yearlong bus boycott. Montgomery’s buses were desegregated on December 21, 1956.

Although U.S. Supreme Court declared racial desegregation in schools was unconstitutional in the Brown vs. Board of Education, Topeka, Kan., decision in May 1954, the memo must not have reached Arkansas state officials, who tried to block nine high school students from entering Central High School in Little Rock in 1957.

Racial injustices were not limited to the South. In California, there were hundreds of communities that had covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs) excluding African-Americans, Jews, Hindus, Eastern Europeans, and Asian-Americans from living in those neighborhoods. I learned San Lorenzo had such CC&Rs when I was a reporter for a San Francisco Bay Area newspaper. Stephen Maganini of The Sacramento Bee wrote a September 12, 2005, article about an Assembly Bill that addressed such racist language in past CC&Rs. Arden Park in North Sacramento had such restrictions.

I realize my boss is trying to raise morale, as my younger sister T2 suggested, by having us all dress up. However, having a Halloween costume theme based on the “Happy Daze” of the 1950s is racially and historically offensive. And I will have no part in it.

My idea was to wear a purple SEIU Local 1000 t-shirt and a pair of distressed (read: holey) jeans and come to work as I am – a disgruntled state worker. Under the circumstances of furloughs and job cuts, I think a disgruntled state worker is scarier than Freddy Krueger or Jason from “Friday the 13th.”

Writing Diva

The Post-Racial Bus

Most weekdays I ride a commuter bus to work. The bus starts in Fairfield, picks up passengers in Vacaville and Dixon, and travels to downtown Sacramento, where it makes six stops before returning nonstop to Fairfield.

I drive my car to the Davis Street Park-and-Ride lot in Vacaville and take the bus from there. I know most of my fellow commuters by sight, some by name. We’re a varied group – different ages, races, backgrounds going to work or school. I have made two friends from riding the commuter bus.

This morning there was a disruption. A young African-American man with a backpack boarded the bus in Vacaville with about 15 of us. The Monday bus tends to fill up quickly. When the young man, who, I assume, is a college student, went to the back of the bus, he spread out his backpack on the seat next to him. One of the regular commuters, a man of East Indian descent, attempted to sit by the young man, who allegedly said, “You don’t want to sit next to a black man.” (I got this secondhand from another regular passenger, who heard the conversation.) The commuter sat next to me until his stop. The young man eventually apologized before he got off at his stop.

I found the episode a bit surreal. On December 1, 1955, an African-American woman named Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus, where blacks were ordered to sit. Instead, she sat at the front in the white section and was arrested for taking a seat.

After an event that sparked the Civil Rights Movement and gave us some of the rights all people enjoy today, I find it rather annoying for the young man to deny another commuter a seat, either because he wanted that space to himself or he had a chip on his shoulder.

So, I have a message for the young passenger: Grow up! It’s 2009, for crying out loud! For one thing, the transit district rules state that you cannot save a seat. Second, it’s inappropriate to cause such a ruckus on public transportation. If you don’t want anyone to sit next to you, drive yourself to school or work.

If you choose to take public transportation, leave your problems and racial hang-ups off the bus.

Writing Diva