GUEST OPINION: PV school district should admit mistake and move on GUEST OPINION: PV school district should admit mistake and move on (January 22, 2003)

By Maryann Moise Derwin

The eighth graders at Corte Madera School in Portola Valley are reading "To Kill a Mockingbird." As I was thumbing through my son's copy, I came upon a line spoken by Atticus. "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

Last December, after the gossip from the eighth graders' infamous Night of the Notables had managed to infiltrate even the 4/5 playground, my fifth grader asked his tennis teacher, a young African-American man, why it was wrong for a student to paint his skin brown if he was instructed to come in costume as an African-American scientist.

After all, girls dressed up as men to depict their scientists, one boy even rolled into the room in a wheelchair, so why all the fuss over the kid who wore the brown face paint?

I thought it significant that my son did not come to me with the question, but instead chose the person who, in his judgment, would give the truest answer.

The tennis teacher shook his head, took a breath and told him in no uncertain terms that when a white person paints his face black, no matter how well intentioned, the result is tremendously offensive to all African-American people. It reminds them of the blackface acts used in minstrel shows and the attached years of racial stereotyping. It is both disrespectful and unimaginably hurtful. Charlie, my fifth grader, got it.

There you go. Question. Answer. Issue resolved.

Because of my various connections and alliances, I have the unenviable position of understanding at a basic level every major player's view in the current mess at Corte Madera School in Portola Valley.

Indeed, at times, I have looked at this thing as a modern day Rashamon story, the tale in which a man is murdered, the events are told by four different witnesses and consequently, four different stories emerge.

As a PTA president, I feel an allegiance to the district and understand the legal constraints that have rendered them silent. As a person noted for speaking out and going against the grain when necessary, I feel an affinity and allegiance to Sheryl Corke, a teacher known for disturbing the universe.

My friendship with a reporter at the Almanac has made it hard to read about our community as portrayed in the last two issues while simultaneously biting my tongue and trying to keep an open mind.

I'm married to an attorney and this speaks volumes. So you see, anything I write here will surely get me in trouble with someone. But at the end of the day, the face staring back at me in the mirror is my own.

So let me break this down to what I have first-hand experience with, the precipitating event that caused the world as we know it in Portola Valley to go off track - that damn Night of the Notables.

A mistake was made; a child was allowed to present her scientist's work while wearing brown face paint. For African-Americans and anyone who has taken a black history class in college (sorry, but it's true), this symbolized something ugly and offensive.

Was it comparable to a burning cross? For me, no, but I'm white. As hard as I try to look at things through the other person's eyes, my ancestors weren't brought kicking and screaming to this country in chains in the bowels of a large ship to be sold into slavery.

Can we as a community admit that a mistake was made, open ourselves to understand why this was a mistake, tell our children why this was a mistake, make sure this sort of unfortunate event never repeats itself and move on?

I don't believe most of us in Portola Valley are racist and I don't believe this incident taken in its purest form is a blatant and hostile act of racism.

What it shows is ignorance, a lack of sensitivity, and excuse me for being direct, stupidity. We are all human; we make mistakes. Don't we tell our children every day that they have to make mistakes in order to learn? Do we really think that as adults with advanced college degrees that we're done learning? Do you remember the line from the courthouse scene in "Mockingbird?" "They've done it before . . . and they'll do it again and when they do it - seems that only the children weep." Perhaps if we pay close attention to the innocent words and actions of our children we can find a way back to each other as adults.

Maryann Moise Derwin lives on Ramoso Road in Portola Valley and is president of the PTA at Corte Madera School.