City Kid by Nelson George Page A

reflecting the will of the community surrounding the school, would be able to fire teachers and principals without having to go through the traditional review process. The Ocean Hill-Brownsville school board had aggressively exercised its powers, and the United Federation of Teachers head, Albert Shanker, a combative man who never bit his tongue, saw this as an attack on the seniority system he’d fought hard to set up.
    Quickly the battle between the black school board and the white, largely Jewish teachers’ leadership became a flash point for the city’s black and white tensions. My mother experienced the conflict firsthand. As a young teacher she refused to make black and Latino students recite the Pledge of Allegiance. A white assistant principal tried to get her suspended, and a garbage can was tossed through the windshield of his car by a local activist. “Leave Arizona George alone” was the message. And he did. It’s just one example of the black versus white turf wars that infected the school system. The strike ended, but the antagonism between the black community and the UFT (and white New York) continued to fester.
    When school resumed in October my class moved at an accelerated speed to make up time. Maybe if I hadn’t missed those introductory weeks I might have been able to keep up. But as we moved through algebra and Spanish, I found myself spending increasing amounts of time staring out of the window with the Temptations’ “Cloud Nine” playing on my internal radio.
    It didn’t help my growing insecurity that my classmates were overwhelmingly white, Jewish, and seemingly hugely better prepared for the leap to junior high educationally and socially. Nor was I comforted by the presence of our homeroom teacher, a taciturn man who had a perpetual smirk on his face and Moe Howard hair, who didn’t seem to like me very much, or as much as I was used to. As the “black boy who could read,” I had gotten lots of attention back at P.S. 189. It wasn’t until Meyer Levin that I realized how much that support had meant to me.
    I had many memorable interactions that sad year in seventh grade. Of course, there was Bruce Gelman and our Marv Albert- Knicks broadcaster competition. There was Chucky, a tall, curly-headed classmate who called me “shvarts” to my face or shouted “Hey shvarts !” at me in the hallways. When I asked what it meant, Chucky would say “brother” or “black person.” None of my fellow Jewish classmates thought it worthwhile to inform me it could also be used to mean “nigger.” So wherever you are, Chucky, I send out a big “fuck you!”
    Then there was Brian, a laid-back, passive kid who, along with me, had failed at all the more popular instruments. After failing at trumpet, violin, and flute, Brian and I wound up as the band’s baritone section (the baritone horn looks like a tuba, sounds like trombone, and has the presence of neither) and furiously rehearsed our four-bar solo at the Meyer Levin semester-end concert.
    My schoolwork also wasn’t helped one bit by my full-on discovery of masturbation. I must have glazed all my underwear and pajama pants with semen during those first fanatic months of full-on self-pleasure. Every week Jet magazine had some big-hipped sista in a swimsuit in its photo section (“Brenda is a student, aspiring airline stewardess and enjoys go-go dancing. This Macon, Georgia, beauty is 34-28-38”). Then there was Players magazine (“for me who is”), the first true black men’s magazine. The photo reproductions could be poor, and the girls a very mixed bag, but hey, I wasn’t really that picky. My mother endured washing my stained clothes with nary a comment to me. It must be an unspoken rule of motherhood never to mention masturbation to their sons.
    Suddenly feeling inferior and helplessly horny, I was dropped down to class 8-8 for