Certain People (35 page)

As blacks grow more secure with their new status, black society will cohere and become less divisive and competitive. But stratification within the group will result, as it always has in any upwardly mobile society, and there will always be “certain people” at the top of the social pecking order. And as more and more blacks become successful, the more they will be resented by the less successful and, inevitably, the gap between the educated and successful blacks at the top and the ill-educated poor at the bottom will seem wider and more unbridgeable.

In America, social class has always been defined by money more than anything else. Once money comes, manners and social “polish” follow, as a rule, in time. The newly rich of any color or ethnic group are always quick to surround themselves with costly possessions, things, the flashy trappings of wealth—whether they are the late Mrs. Horace Dodge, a former schoolteacher, who bought herself a huge yacht and a necklace of pearls the size of pigeons' eggs, or John H. Johnson, covering the walls of his closets with fake fur. You get back, as the saying goes, with what you get—though to an older moneyed class this attitude might seem a bit vulgar. As money in families ages, it becomes boring. One grows tired of one's yacht and lets it sink, as Mrs. Dodge did, into the mud of Lake St. Clair. One begins to underplay one's possessions, and to distance oneself from one's wealth, and to cultivate other areas. While the haves try to get away from their money, the have-nots are doing just the opposite. As more blacks become haves, and become accustomed to their situation, they, too, will become more reluctant to flaunt what they have
got, and probably take on the quiet ways one associates with the American gentry. In a way, this is too bad because, as a corollary to this, they will also lose what is currently their special vitality, their brash charm, their distinctiveness—that wonderful raffishness—just as the German Jews did when they turned from scrappy peddlers into stolid city burghers with top hats and town houses.

George Johnson has said, “If a black has enough money today, he can live anywhere he wants.” This is without a doubt true, and Johnson proved it by moving peacefully into an otherwise expensive, all-white suburb. But what Johnson overlooks is the fact that his is not the
most
expensive neighborhood on Chicago's North Shore. What was a peaceful move to Glencoe might be a somewhat less peaceful move to, let us say, Lake Forest. In matters of real estate, tremors of fear are still felt in white breasts when a rumor circulates that a black family wants to buy a house in an all-white part of town—not fear of violence, but simply a fear that valuable investments will be lost if an area “begins to go black.” Whites have seen too many neighborhoods go downhill when blacks moved in, and have heard too many lurid, often exaggerated, tales of others. What they have not heard are the many less interesting stories of white neighborhoods that have become integrated and remained stable. At the same time, blacks themselves who live on pleasant, integrated streets feel the same sort of fear when a neighborhood is threatened with becoming “too black.” Not long ago, a prosperous young black couple from Mississippi moved into a house on such a pleasant and integrated street in Cleveland where a prominent black surgeon and his wife also lived. The doctor's wife paid her new neighbor the customary housewifely call, bringing a cake she had baked as a welcoming gift. But in the course of her visit, the surgeon's wife said, a trifle tersely, “This has always been such a nice neighborhood. I do hope you're going to keep it that way.” The message was quite clear, and as more and more blacks move to “nice” streets, more and more pressure will be put upon them to keep the streets nice—by their fellow blacks.

To avoid this pressure, it seems likely that as a new black upper class emerges there will be more and more elegant, well-manicured all-black suburbs like Collier Heights on the face of our land. Of course, government efforts to enforce integration, in matters such as busing, will stem this process—which is why so many upper-class blacks oppose busing.

Not long ago, in Cincinnati, Oscar Robertson and his wife were
considering buying a house on Grandin Road. Grandin Road is perhaps Cincinnati's most prestigious address. With the grounds of the Cincinnati Country Club on one side, and the curving Ohio River on the other, the street is lined with imposing hillside mansions with sweeping river views. With the news that the Robertsons might become the first black family on Grandin Road came waves of anxiety and doubt. There was no question that the Robertsons were exceptional people and would make splendid neighbors. Voted the National Basketball Association's Most Valuable Player, a former cocaptain of the United States Olympic Gold Medal team, a former guard with the Cincinnati Royals and, later, the Milwaukee Bucks, Oscar Robertson was not only eminently respectable, a gentleman, but also a national celebrity. One should be proud to have him in one's midst. But still, it was Grandin Road. The Robertsons were black. Cincinnati likes to think of itself as a bustling, up-to-date, Eastern town, not a Middle Western backwater, but it still carries a bit of the flavor of the antebellum South. There was a great deal of agonized soul-searching on Grandin Road. People took sides. Hackles rose. Some neighbors stopped talking to other neighbors. People who did not live on Grandin Road called the Grandin Road people bigots and snobs. Grandin Road bitterly denied these allegations. And so it went.

In the end, the problem resolved itself when Robertson decided against the Grandin Road property and bought a house in another part of town. Grandin Road was much relieved. A showdown had been avoided, at least for a while.

Oscar Robertson's new house is in a fine, affluent neighborhood. But it is not quite as fine and affluent a neighborhood as Grandin Road. For Oscar Robertson, the choice of second-best seemed the most sensible, the most peaceable solution for his family—at least in 1976.

And so the black and white races move tentatively but steadily together, like confluent streams moving slowly from disparate sources toward a delta meeting in the future. Everyone knows that the meeting must take place. Not yet, perhaps. But soon … but soon. From her pink—or black—cloud, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, looking down on the progress of the converging streams since her departure from this earth, must in all likelihood be pleased with what she sees. As an educator, she was a fervent believer in education and its power to “lead out.” As an authority on etiquette and manners, she was an
ardent believer in taking things slowly, easily, tactfully. Though many of her views strike blacks today as hopelessly old-fashioned, she was in a sense, a forerunner and an advocate of much of what is happening today. Much could be accomplished, she knew—given patience, politeness, and time. “Keep at it,” she might caution. “But remember that you're black, and different—a rose of another color, as dear Mary might say—and be smart.”

Image Gallery

Charlotte Hawkins Brown with Palmer pupils

Publisher John H. Johnson and his mother, Gertrude Williams (left)

Mrs. John H. Johnson with Marc Chagall in front of her Chagall painting

Mrs. Lowell Zollar outside her Chicago home

Best-dressed Mrs. Lowell Zollar at the new Chicago Ritz-Carlton