Bad Boy by Walter Dean Myers

well, but I became nervous about our friendship. We were at an age to explore dating, or at least parties. And I knew that I would not be welcome, as a black, at many of the parties to which Eric would be invited. Racism existed as a backdrop to our relationship, and I did not want to experience the humiliation of being rejected because I was black. For the first time in my life I was faced with the notion that I would have to deal with the idea of raceas a central part of my life.
    My parents had not prepared me to face the kind of racial issues that I was seeing. Mama, Native American on her father’s side and German on her mother’s, was sympathetic to the black cause. Her mother had been ostracized because she had married a Native American. She had heard stories about the horrors of slavery, which she passed on to me, and knew something about the slaughter of American Indians. When The Lone Ranger came to television, she would watch it just to see Jay Silverheels, the actor who played Tonto.
    My dad’s advice on race was very simple. “The white man won’t give you anything, and the black man doesn’t have anything to give you. If you want anything out of life, you have to get it for yourself.”
    This was Herbert Dean’s counsel on race relations. Actually, getting and doing for oneself was his advice on everything. He talked constantly about having two lists. One list consisted of things you wanted, the other of things you were willing to work for. I don’t think that, having being raised in a segregated Baltimore, he ever imagined I would need to learn interaction with whites, or to deal with being black in any but a defensive manner.
    In truth, everything in my life in 1951 that was personal and had value was white. All the authors Istudied, all the historical figures, with the exception of George Washington Carver, and all those figures I looked upon as having importance were white men. I didn’t mind that they were men, or even white men. What I did mind was that being white seemed to play so important a part in the assigning of values. I knew that the vague thought I had had earlier, that goodness and intelligence could somehow lift a person above the idea of race, was wrong. I wondered where and how I would fit in to a society that basically didn’t like me.

THE GARMENT CENTER
    I was fifteen, starting my junior year at Stuyvesant, and I was lost. I didn’t know where I was going or even where I should have been going. The other boys in the school began the term talking about college. There was an excitement in the air, as some were applying to a program at Yale that allowed them to skip their senior year in high school. There was quite a lot of talk about jobs. Future engineers, physicists, doctors, all sat around me while we waited for the beginning of the annual “Beat Clinton” rally. We wouldn’t beat DeWitt Clinton’s football team, but the rally was fun. A new friend, Stuart Miller, wanted to run a sporting goods shop. I could only think of him as the best writer in the school.
    â€œI can get you a part-time job, man,” my cousin Joseph had promised once when we met at my aunt’s house. “Come on down to my place.”
    â€œI have to get a job through the school,” I lied. I knew Joseph worked in the garment center, pushing a hand truck through the busy streets.
    â€œWell, if they can’t get you anything, come on by my place.”
    He wrote down the name of the company he worked for in the garment district. His handwriting was crude, childish. I took the paper and put it in my pocket, intending to discard it as soon as I could.
    The garment center was once one of the busiest places in New York City. Located largely on Seventh Avenue between 28th and 41st Streets, it was where America’s clothing was made and assembled. Successive waves of immigrants filled its factories, working for little above minimum wage as