What I Learned as a White Girl in a Black School

(52 points)
1. Annotate the following text (20 points)

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend your

senior year as the "new White girl" in an all-Black school? I
went to Detroit's Finney High School alone and terrified, and
left with life-long friends, great memories and a unique
perspective on what it feels like to be a minority.
Your magazine has always featured unique and interesting
stories. I've written this story with Ebony in mind to show
how I was awakened to the realities of prejudice and
accepted into the Black community.
By Tru Love

MY mother pushed me out of the car in front of Finney High and locked the doors behind me.
"You'll be fine," she yelled through the closed car windows.
"If I'm found mutilated in a ditch somewhere, you'll be sorry," I screamed. She just smiled and drove
away.
I was 19 years old on that day, and I was a product of the all-girl Catholic schools of suburban Detroit. I
had endured eight years at St. Clare of Montefalco, complete with horrible red plaid uniforms and church
twice a week. The year that followed at Our Lady Star of the Sea was made thoroughly unbearable by all
the Muffy wannabees with their Preppy Handbooks and daddies' BMWs. I later transferred to
Dominican High School (which was in the city of Detroit, but still all-girl Catholic), where I spent two
happy years. During my second year at Dominican, I had studied industrial electronics at Cornelius
Golightly Vocational Technical Center for half of each school day.
Life at Dominican was good until the end of my junior year when I was told that my entire senior year
would consist of religion classes.
The only escape from this was the Detroit public school system, and I transferred to Finney High School,
generally regarded as one of the worst.
While I no longer had to worry about fulfilling religion requirements, I had a new concern: survival.
Finney High School is 99.9 percent Black, and it was widely rumored that White people were beaten to
death in the school yard--just for fun.
I can still remember my mother dropping me off in front of Finney on the first day of school, the day she
pushed me out of the car and locked the door behind me. I thought--no, I knew--I was going to die.
I knew that a few guys from my class at Golightly went to Finney, but I didn't see any of them as I
surveyed the sea of Black faces, all looking at the skinny White girl standing in front of their school.
There was a group of kids standing outside the main school entrance, which was bolted closed.
"How do you get into school?" I asked a Black girl standing near the door.
"Don't worry," she chimed, "they'll unlock the dungeon when the bell rings."
With that comment she turned her back and began giggling with her friends about the "new White girl."
As the bell rang, people started to move towards the doors. When I reached the door, the guard stopped
me.
"Where's your ID? Nobody gets in without an ID."
"I'm new," I managed to squeak. Other students were passing through, flashing a small piece of plastic.
The guard gave me a long stare and said:
"OK, go down that hallway and turn left. First door on the right. I'll be watching you."
As I was about to follow his instructions, a woman grabbed my arm.
"Walk through the metal detector, sweetheart." I felt as though I was at the airport.
I walked through and found the main office. People were everywhere. Every desk was piled high with
papers. Every phone was ringing. I froze. I didn't even know who was a student and who was working in
the office. Then, like an angel from the sky, Mr. Young, the father of one of my Dominican girlfriends,

appeared.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, trying not to hug the poor man.
"What am I doing here? I'm the principal. What are you doing here?"
"I'm one of your new students."
With that he gave me a big hug and welcomed me to his school, asking: "Have you gotten your papers
yet?" I shook my head, no. He signaled one of his assistants to come over. "This is Tru Love. She's a
new student. Make sure she fills out all the proper paper work and get her an ID right away." As I was
led out of the office, I noticed a few glares from people who had been waiting in line. They didn't look
too pleased. Being identified as the principal's pet on the first day at school is not good karma, especially
if you're one of the few White people in the entire school. It's not as if I'd be hard to find.
Instead of religion, my mornings were to be spent studying physics, American history and English
literature before bussing off to Golightly for the afternoon. No sooner had I received a copy of my
schedule than one of my buddies from Golightly Vo-Tech, William Fortune, arrived to give me a grand
tour of my new school.
All afternoon I ran into buddies from Golightly. At every encounter I was introduced to new, friendly
faces. Robert Barnes was very protective. "Hey, y'all, this is my good friend, Tru. Keep an eye on her for
me and don't let anyone mess with her." For the next few months of school I was escorted to all my
classes.
The classes were much harder than I had anticipated. Who would've figured a bunch of Finney kids
could make me look stupid in physics? Finney had the reputation of being nothing but drug dealers and
pimps. These so-called drug dealers were ruining my GPA. They were blowing me out of the water,
getting A-pluses to my Cs. I was humble enough to ask for tutoring in physics and my classmates were
gracious enough to help me pass.
While the nuns at Our Lady Star of the Sea were strict, they didn't have attitudes like one of my teachers
who seemed to hate all humans, especially Finney students. Instead of taking attendance each morning,
this teacher gave a lecture on how worthless we were. "I wish all you pieces of trash wouldn't even show
up for class. Why don't you skip like the rest of the school. I get paid whether you losers show up or
not." He never really lectured; he just showed movies of dead people.
I was deathly afraid of going into the bathroom, and for good reason. It always smelled like vomit, and
there was always a gang of unfriendly girls hanging out. They used to say things like, "What you looking
at, White girl? Why don't you go back where you came from?" I thought for sure they were going to
jump me and pound my skinny butt. There were some things the guys couldn't help me with. in the
bathroom, I was on my own. My ignorance was demonstrated to me often, but never so pointedly as one
day while walking down the hall going to class. "Hey, hey, you," the stranger said as he grabbed my
wrist. "Check in the Swatch."
"Check it in?" I asked. "Check what in where? What are you talking about?"
He just started laughing and walked away. "Dang, you a stupid White girl." My buddy William was
walking towards me, saw the stranger and stopped to talk. They were friends. I walked up to them.
"William." I asked, "what does |check it in' mean?"
"What? Who told you that?" William demanded. I nodded to the guy next to him. William grabbed the
stranger by the shirt and shook him like a rag doll, yelling obscenities.
"I didn't know she was a friend of yours, Will," the stranger pleaded, "I didn't mean nothing. Really, I'm
sorry!" William was not amused. The stranger had tried to steal my Swatch. I received a prompt apology
and he became a new guardian angel.
That afternoon at Golightly the guys heard my Swatch story and decided it was time I learned some
Black slang. The guys put together a list of about 20 words that were in common use then, with
definitions written in "White translation." Here are a few of my favorites:
Grippin'--driving, i.e., "You're 16, you be grippin' now."
Crib--house, i. e., "I'll meet you back at the crib."
Check it in--Give it to me, i.e., "Check in the Swatch."
Hook me up--Take care of me. If Susan was eating candy and I wanted to ask her to share it, I'd say
"Hook me up, Susan."
After my first six months at Finney, I felt as if I belonged. I knew most of the seniors and had quite a
few close friends. I finally had people to hang out with in the halls, besides the guys from Golightly. I
had a few shoving matches with people, but nothing as bad as the day of the shooting, which happened
in the main hallway. William and I were walking to class when someone yelled, He's got a knife!"
William grabbed my arm and made me run with him in the opposite direction.

"Baam!"
We hit the ground and didn't look up. Everyone started screaming. Security guards were running
everywhere. I never found out what happened, but I know how the gun got into the school. The school
officials seal off all windows and doors except the main door. Someone pried a window open and
handed the gun to someone already inside. That's how the students got contraband around the metal
detectors.
Keith and I were in the same English class. Every day before class people would run to the school candy
store and buy penny candy to munch on. It was a group thing to walk down together and then run back to
class when the bell rang. Anyway, Keith always brought something back for me and made it a point to
include me in conversations. I always tried to pay him back for the candy, but he refused.
"Don't feel left out," he'd say. "You're cool with us." Just Keith's way of making me feel welcome.
I never forgot how sweet he was to me. In fact, I got to return the kindness a few years later when we
were both attending the University of Michigan. Keith was supposed to go to the University of Alabama,
but I spotted him in the university mall at U of M one day. He looked pretty lonely. I quickly bought two
fries and two cokes at the local fast food place and slid up next to him.
"Don't feel left out, Keith," I said with a smile. "You're cool with me." He smiled and his whole face lit
up. After we ate, I introduced him to all my friends. Keith and I are firm believers that what goes around
comes around.
One thing that shocked me about Finney was how well everyone dressed. People think all Detroiters are
poor and have no sense of style. They couldn't be more wrong. Some of my classmates were preppier
than Muffy at Star, and had better taste. The running joke at Finney was that White people wear Black
fashions, but not until two or three years later. So if you want to know what Muffy is going to wear in
three years, go to Finney and check out the styles. One afternoon I was sitting by my locker trying to roll
my pants, which is the hardest thing in the world to do. You have to keep your leg straight and roll the
bottom of the pants leg in a neat, crisp cuff--twice. I was getting it wrong and becoming increasingly
frustrated, when a group of girls approached my locker. I got up, thinking that they needed to get in the
locker next to mine.
"Sit down," one girl said.
Great, I though, they're gonna beat me up while I'm sitting.
"The trick is to flip the ends at an angle," she explained, as she rolled the left leg and went for the right.
She made it look so easy. I must have looked pretty pathetic for them to stop and help "the new White
girl," but I was very grateful that they took an extra second to help me out. We even discussed clever
ways to accessorize with a scarf When I attended Star, I hated fashion. When I attended Finney, I loved
it.
Senior year was almost over and everyone was talking about the senior trip. The senior class was going
to go on a cruise to the Bahamas and then hang out at Walt Disney World. All my friends at Finney were
going and I wanted to go party with the rest of the seniors. The problem was breaking the news to my
mother.
"Mom," I said casually one day, "I'd like to go on the senior trip to the Bahamas and Walt Disney World.
What do you think?"
"You want to go on a senior trip with your friends from Dominican?" Mom asked.
"No, Mom. With the senior class of Finney." I thought my mother was going to have a heart attack.
"Let me see if I understand what you're saying." She was in shock. "You want to go party with the senior
class at Finney? Is this the same Finney High School where I had to push you out of the car on your first
day of school?" My mother has a wonderful way of proving her point and making me feel stupid. But
she still beams about the accomplishment to this day. She says that going to Finney was good for my
soul and that it taught me what it felt like to be an outsider and a minority. More importantly, it
reinforced the lesson she has always taught: all people are the same, no matter what their race or color.
We all love, hate, cry, fear, bleed, die, and wish for health and happiness.
The senior trip was great. I hated traveling by bus, but we were high school students, not Rockefellers.
By this time, I was one of the masses. I knew everyone, and everyone knew me. On the bus, we sang
corny TV theme songs, played charades and cards, and listened to pre-recorded tapes on boom boxes.
But the most fun on the road was stopping for food in a small, all-White town. I remember the first time
we stopped at a fast-food place. The class president gave me the game plan. "This is what we do,"
Emanual whispered. "Tru, you walk in alone and order food. Half the bus will 90 in the front door, the
other half will use the side door. At the count of three we all run in quietly and stand behind Tru." So
there I was, ordering food, and two seconds later my whole class is standing behind me. The counter
people just about wet their pants because they'd never seen so many Black people in their entire lives.
The silence was deafening, and when the suspense reached a peak, we all yelled, "Surprise!" it may
sound silly, but we had a great time playing with their prejudice.
I loved my roommates on the senior trip. We stayed up until all hours of the morning, talking, giggling,
and eating junk food. Lisa and Ronnie were especially funny. I was getting ready to go to sleep. I pulled

on my favorite sweats and brushed my teeth. I grabbed my brush and started walking to my bed.
"Will you look at this?" Lisa cooed. "Brushing her hair before she goes to sleep."
Ronnie jumped in, "Is this what all White people do before they go to bed?"
"I don't know," I said, "I'm not all White people."
The whole senior class thought I was stupid for wasting my time lying in the sun. "You wanna get
darker, and we wanna get lighter." said Margo, who refused to he out in the sun. "Last time I fell asleep
in the sun, I swear to God, I turned a shade darker and I had to buy all new makeup."
One night, about 3 a.m., the girls in my room decided we were thirsty. Curfew was midnight, and the
rules were laid out firmly--in your room at midnight, and don't leave unless there's an emergency. But
we needed soft drinks. The machine was on a different level, and we were the only Black school at the
hotel. My roomies convinced me to go on the soda run. "No one will say anything to you, because you're
White. They'll think you're with a different school."
"Okay," I agreed, "I'll do it, but being White has nothing to do with it." I did the soda run only for thirst's
sake. I didn't get caught, and I met a cute guy on the elevator.
The one-day cruise to the Bahamas was exciting. We sailed on a huge ship for a couple Of hours, and I
got a most impressive sun burn. My friends kept teasing me that I was trying to get as dark as they were.
Walt Disney World was the ultimate in fun. Since I had been there as a child I made a great tour guide
for the first timers. I had everyone pooped by the end of the day. We went on all the rides: Space
Mountain, the Haunted Castle, Pirates of Penzance, It's a Small World, the Hall of Presidents--to name a
few.
I noticed how everyone was looking at us funny at Walt Disney World. I could almost see it in their
faces, "Look at the poor White dear, forced to go around in the park with all those Black children. Poor
thing."
Once I was the skinny, White girl, standing in front of Finney, convinced that I was going to die, and
now I wanted to scream that we are all friends, all alike. It's not even about Black or White. It's about
how people treat you because they perceive you to be different, without realizing that inside we're all the
same.
Tru Love "'What I learned as a white girl in a black school.'". Ebony. FindArticles.com. 20 Jan, 2011.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_n11_v48/ai_13230339/
COPYRIGHT 1993 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

What I Learned as a White Girl in a Black School

Post Reading Activities
*answer these questions AFTER reading and annotating the story

1. Create a chart that explains the differences between Finney and the private school Tru came
from. Be sure to support each difference with a QUOTE: (12 points)

Catholic School
Finney




Quote:




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2. How did Tru grow and change during her time at Finney? Do you think she made the right decision to
go there? Why or why not? Be sure to write at least 5 sentences in this answer. (10 points)