In Mount Airy, interaction and integration are all in the mix

By Marc Stier

I've learned many lessons about the difficulties, possibilities, and importance of communication between the races in the United States after living in Philadelphia's racially integrated Mount Airy neighborhood for 10 years and leading its community organization for three years.

Living next door to people of another race doesn't, necessarily, make for social interaction. Given our increasingly private lives, even living next door to someone of the same race doesn't ensure it. But interaction is easier in Mount Airy.

Communal institutions - coffee shops, a local theater, basketball courts, and the neighborhood and community associations - are places where people of all kinds mix in my community. That enables us to see what we all have in common and break down the barriers to real friendship.

In 2003, I traveled to South Jersey for the funeral of the father of an African American friend; I was the only white there. At the funeral of my father, there might be one or two blacks present. When my friend and I die, the mourners will, as we say, "look like Mount Airy."

Living in an integrated community helps white people recognize the persistence of institutional racism because we are affected by it, too. When, for example, we discover that auto-insurance rates are sometimes twice as high in Mount Airy as they are in Chestnut Hill or that advances in business services tend to appear in "whiter" communities before our own, it becomes hard to deny that racism still burdens African Americans.

Integrated living also gives us the right expectations for our surroundings. During a summer trip to Vermont in 2000, my then-8-year-old daughter said, "Vermont is strange. We've hardly seen any black people here."

We learn to see how race shapes people's perceptions. I once walked down Germantown Avenue with a representative of a supermarket. "You realize what a gamble we are taking trying to make money in this demographic," he said to me as he waved his hand toward an African American man across the street. "That fellow," I replied, "is a friend of mine. He makes three times your salary."

Communal problems are often overlaid with racial tension. A community-school playground was opposed by some neighbors. They had good reasons for their concerns. And a few had some bad reasons, too.

We've learned in Mount Airy to recognize and talk about all those reasons because doing so is the best way to diminish the role of the racism in our lives.

Those tensions run in all directions. Four years ago, the leader of a largely African American church wanted to purchase two historic properties and tear them down to build a mega-church. He insisted that opposition to the proposal was racially motivated. For a few people, that was true.

But we dealt with his contention by showing that the majority of the people who signed a petition to save the buildings were black.

These are painful conversations. For most whites, and some blacks, talking about racism and its effects is like talking about someone who has cancer. But you learn in Mount Airy that you can't gain the trust of others, or begin to address a common problem, if you can't acknowledge a fundamental fact of their lives.

The same is true for personal interactions. Whites and blacks both fear bad receptions from one another. At a training session for a voter-registration drive, a white person asked, "Can we go door to door on mostly black blocks? Will people be hostile to us?"

I've talked with black neighbors about joining the mostly white neighborhood association on the next block. "Are you sure we will be welcome?" some have asked.

I often reassure folks, both black and white, that others are almost always grateful when you reach out to them so long as you don't come with assumptions about who is in charge.

In 2004, when I ran for state representative in the 198th District, a consultant trying to be helpful offered to teach me "how to talk to black folks." I politely thanked him. But I already knew how to sit down in a bar or a barbershop in any neighborhood in this city and talk. I knew how to be myself with people of all kinds.

Living a truly integrated life enables us finally to become totally comfortable in our own skin and in our own country.