School Colors: Fast Times at Berkeley High
School Colors Do Not Fade
Note on names: my spelling of names from the video are approximations. The names are difficult to understand from the audio track, and the subtitles useually make things worse.
It was 1994. We had just moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia, and I had not yet abandoned PBS and NPR, although I was growing impatient with their increasingly liberal bias and was not watching much of their content. I did not have kids in school but had become interested in education issues. I was particularly influenced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., and his book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. The fact that Hirsch was despised by teachers’ unions for his advocacy of teaching students about their own culture (Western Civ, as it was once referred to) only heightened my interest in what he had to say.
I had friends who were teachers, including one who taught in an inner-city Chicago all-Black high school. The horror stories he told me and other issues I had read about gave me the impression that teaching was becoming more of a combat mission than an educational odyssey. Any thought I had about returning to teaching, even part-time, was met with a stark warning: Teaching is nothing like you remember it. Avoid at all costs.
One night, I noticed a promo for a Frontline episode titled School Colors. I was intrigued when I read the blurb summarizing the episode:
OCTOBER 18, 1994
SEASON 1994: EPISODE 1
Integration. It was called the greatest social experiment of our generation. But 40 years after Brown v. Bd of Ed, many of our schools are still sharply segregated along color lines. America’s changing demographics have tested the limits of our racial and ethnic tolerance, leaving many of us to ask whetther the nation’s diversity will enrich us or tear us apart. Follows one year in the lives of Berkeley CA students and principal.
I watched. It turned out to be one of the most fascinating documentaries I had ever seen. It was the days of VCRs, but I neglected to record the program, not expecting much. The next summer we were visiting a relative who had a summer home in Michigan. A friend stopped by. My brother-in-law introduced her as a someone he knew in high school who had just moved to East Lansing, Michigan, from Berkeley, California.
That seemed an odd move to me. Usually, it was people moving from Michigan to California, not the other way around. She explained that her son was about to enter high school. Her husband had gone to a high school affiliated with Michigan State University where he had gotten an exceptional STEM related education. He wanted his son to have the same experience.
Of course, the Frontline documentary came to mind. I asked the woman if she had seen it. She had not, but she asked about it. When I described some of the scenarios to her, she was flabbergasted. She said something to the effect that that was exactly how it was. The dysfunction at Berkeley High was exactly why they had moved. She could not believe they actually showed the events I described on television, much less on liberal PBS. She had to see it, she said, and asked me for particulars. I am not sure I could even remember the exact title but said I would check the PBS website and email her.
I had had the same reaction to the documentary. This was Frontline on liberal PBS? And this was Berkeley High in the city of Berkeley, California, that might as well be in Communist China? It soon became obvious that a lot of liberal apologists for our failing schools were not happy about the broadcast either. It became almost impossible to find after the initial showing.
Later when I wanted to watch School Colors again, I could not find it anywhere. It was not available on CD in the PBS store, and it could not be found in a schedule of future broadcasts. I finally located a copy at a lending library near Boston. I had to prepay, leave a deposit, then they mailed me the CD or DVD. I think I had fourteen days to view it, then had to send it back. I copied it, but when I tried to find it recently, the file was corrupted.
Fortunately, the video is now available on YouTube (see link above). Searching for it on the PBS website brings up the summary I noted above, but there is also the advisory This film is currently not available for streaming. Apparently, PBS is still not proud of its association with the documentary. Perhaps, it has not been censored by YouTube (yet) because the situation at Berkeley High in 1994 is rapidly becoming the norm now, especially at inner city high schools with a varied ethnic mix of students.
School Colors opens with random scenes of students interacting on campus. There are brief comments from students representative of the various ethnic groups that make up the student body . We learn that a group of students has been selected (based on the racial makeup of the school, of course—DEI) to be trained in documentary filmmaking. The students will then be mostly responsible for the video’s production.
The Following Program Contains Graphic Language
Viewer discretion is advised.
It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education…Such an opportunity is a right which must be available to all on equal terms.
BROWN vs. BOARD OF EDUCATION 1954
After the opening warning to viewers in regard to language and the quote from the landmark Brown decision, there is a black-and-white flashback to a news broadcast from 1968 shot on a Berkeley elementary school playground where a multiracial group of children is happily playing while a TV news correspondent records a standup for later broadcast.
The Berkeley plan, Integration ‘68, is reality today as Berkeley became the first major American city to achieve total integration in its public schools. As one Berkeley mother put it this morning, I think it’s going to be a wonderful experience for the children. I only wish that I had the same opportunity when I was young.
The video jumps ahead to the reality of Berkeley High in 1994.
It’s been 40 years since the Brown decision, and 25 years since Berkeley became one of the first school districts in the nation to voluntarily desegregate schools. Today when large numbers of White students have fled from urban public schools, Berkeley High has maintained as diverse a student body as you can find anywhere. This is a story of a year in the life of a school and its students as they struggle with racial identity and the legacy of school integration.
We then see see a succession of students being photogrpahed for the yearbook. A pretty Latina girl is posing. The photographer politely asks her to turn her head a bit more towards the camera which she does.
“How about a smile?” The phographer asks. The young girl silently and sullenly shakes her head no. “No smile today, OK. Stay right there.” Next up is a Black male who manages a smile but overall, appears no happier than the dour girl who preceded him.
The obvious lack of enthusiasm of the students for a traditionally joyous activity, at least partly feigned, as well as an earlier shot panning a row of graffiti laced lockers, foreshadows the fact that all times are not good times at Berkeley High, despite the meticulous plan for a multi-racial/multi-cultural utopia that had been hatched in 1968.
The Class of 94 from a high school that is 39 percent White, 35 percent African-American, 10 percent Asian and Pacific Islander, 9 percent Chicano/Latino and 7 percent mixed race—Berkeley High is an ethnic microcosm of urban America.
Every fall for decades Toga Day has been a tradition for Berkeley High seniors. Last year Toga Day was renamed Ethnicity Day.
Another tradition, another legacy of White supremacy. A tall White boy with long hair, who looks like a blonde Fabio, dressed in a toga for Ethnicity Day, tells us that people got upset about Toga Day. Only White people could relate to a celebration that was based on Greek culture. He indicates that he is resigned to the change despite the fact that he believes that tradition should prevail. Togas are too Eurocentric, a toga-clad girl chimes in.
I could not help thinking back to my college days when one of the highlights of the year was the toga party. It was a good excuse to go commando beneath the toga and facilitated making out after the dancing and the lights were doused. The last thing on our minds was Greek culture.
A clean-cut, handsome Hispanic boy, who most casual observers could easily take for caucasian, says “they should really read up on what the Greeks did because they were thieves and robbers, and they were just…vandals. So, if they’re identifying with that, you know. That just really shows the truth about what the school is about.”
He points to a relief sculpture of a Greek god on the side of a modern building. “That (sculpture) we have to be below every day. So, you know, (there is) this little psychological effect of those things, you know.”
Cut to three light-skinned Black girls huddled together on a bench. The girl in the center, umistakably dressed in a caricature of African garb, is the spokesman for the group. Asked to define ethnicity she says, “Ethnicity is…I guess you just dress based on your heritage, based on your culture. I feel that this is the appropriate attire for an African woman.”
“This is Africa,” says the girl to her right who is decked out with ample bling but does not appear to be dressed as anyone but a typical teenager of the day. “This is little Africa to me. That’s Europe.” She points toward the White students in their togas. “I don’t care to go over there. I stay here. Maybe snack bar, something like that but that’s about it.”
A stocky Latino wearing a Mexican flag head band and an Aztec design T-shirt says, “I dress like this cause you know, I’m politicaly active. I’m Chicano. We wanna show our pride, you know, kick it together. You know, all the Mexicans….”
He is interrupted when a prankster behind him puts a large Mexican sombrero on his head, blocking his vision and interrupting his soliloquy. His colleagues around him begin chanting Viva la raza! Viva! (Long live the race).
Cut to a group of Black students. One says, “We’re kind o’ segregated. We got Whites over there, Blacks (unintelligible)right here. And Mexicans over there. Other words, we call them France, Africa and Mexico.” (Points to three different groups.)
By this time, only shortly into the video, one gets the point that far from being a melting pot and a model for integration of the races, Berkeley High is at best a mixed salad. At worst, it may be as segregated as the Jim Crow south.
The narrator then explains that “in a school where students are often separated by race, some forty seniors were recruited by the film team for a year long class in video journalism. The students were chosen to mirror the ethnic diversity of the school.”
The students in the video class introduce themselves. First up is a Black male in a black hoodie with the hood pulled down to the top of his sunglasses. “My name is Jeff Marie,” he begins. “Most people know me as G. I’m really into like writing things, stories. I like to write screenplays. I like every aspect pf movie making—the camera work, the gaffer, the best boy. Directing is my specialty.”
One Hispanic boy speaks in Spanish, giving his name as Renato Casares. He identifies as Mexicano-Salvadoreño and also reveals that he is co-class president. He switches to English “for all of you who don’t speak Spanish.” He repeats his name and adds, “I like my name to be pronounced correctly. It’s not Renato, OK?” I infer his point is that he wants the R to be trilled or rolled as it is in Spanish.
The next speaker is an attractive and personable self-identified Chicana, Flecha Rios. In her demeanor, she presents an immediate contrast with the rest of the students . Although she expresses her ethnic pride and pays lip service to la raza, she cannot extinguish her natural winning smile or hide her essential optimism and enthusiasm for life. One can envision her as an eventual business executive, doctor, lawyer or in what would be a win for everyone, a teacher. Her words reveal another reality, another division. Hispanics are not one group in the minds of the Berkeley High Hispanics. There are the Mexicans. Then there are those from other Central and South American countries. The potential for division is enormous.
Next up is Eddie Mezincescu, wearing a Cal baseball cap and a white T-shirt. “I’m White, real White, and like to promote whiteness. Slightly conservative. Trying to survive. Not doing too well. Like to see other perspectives. Trying to get by.”
Soft-spoken, handsome, Arthur Yee, says he is from Canton, China, “and I was here for almost fifteen years. I enjoy riding, mountain biking and so on.” Arthur seems slightly ill at ease. He is the only one who does not comment on his ethnic pride.
Finally, there is Faith, representing the mixed race contingent. “I’m part Native American Indian, part Afro-American, part Russian, part French, and I’m Jewish.”
In 1994, when I first saw the video, I was stunned by the self-segregation and the students’ obsession with race and ethnicity. It was something I did not expect to see in liberal Berkeley. I would have thought that if any school could successfully integrate, it would have been a school in Berkeley. Watching the documentary now, I see it with the added context of having taught English as a Second Language for fourteen years in a Virginia public school. I also bring my experiemce as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador—and it goes without saying, my invisible backpack of White privilege.
When I watch the select students in the film class, especially the Latinos, I see intelligent, exceptionally talented, poised, confident and articulate students. Knowing what hardships the Latino students, especially, would face if they were to be stuck in poverty in a poor Latin American country, situations that their parents faced, I find it difficult to understand their discontent. They have already achieved a lot, have everything working for them and can look forward to a successful future, yet they choose to see themselves as victims, a victimhood that must be compensated for with a defensive, outspoken ethnic chauvinism.
A group of students and teachers are queried for their opinion as to why the school is so segregated. No one questions that there are divisions. Few have an explanation. Those who do tend to shrug their shoulders and answer with some variation on a theme of that’s just the way people are. As one Black male says, “People want to be with their own.” Wow, I think, 180 degrees from the position that Negroes and the NAACP took in the fifties and sixties when Blacks were fighting for a piece of the integrated pie.
Some students as well as teachers blame tracking. Today, tracking—the assignment of students to classes according to academic ability as measured by test scores—is virtually verboten. At Berkeley high in 1994, tracking results in most students in the upper track being White or Asian, while most students in the middle track are Black or Latino. Eighty-five percent of the students in fast-track or AP classes are White or Asian. The lowest track math classes are 85% Black and Latino and failure rates are three times higher for these students.
Several teachers give a range of opinions. Most tiptoe around the issue. They would generally prefer a class of a mixed level of students. However, when the camera focuses on a low level math class, it becomes obvious why the low level students would be completely lost in a higher level math class, even an average math class.
The teacher, an Asian male who exudes competence, is trying to explain what a cube is to a Black male student. The teacher is remarkably patient and tries several ways of explaining the problem. He tries using an analogy to a sugar cube, but the student does not understand even that analogy. He cannot envision the three-dimensional figure. Imagine how frustrating it would be for other students if the teacher had to take five or ten minutes to explain to one student the concept of a cube.
The math teacher says that while it would be nice in theory to have Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians and what-have-yous in one class, reality makes that difficult if not impossible. He talks about the changes at Berkeley High over several decades.
We’re fighting a history of low self-esteem, low achievement levels, disinterest in school—a lack of motivation for why they want to be in school….Historically Berkeley High School had been an elitist school. Twenty years ago, thirty years ago, they adopted the philosophy of everybody is able to and should go to college. Everybody is equal which is a good philosophy. It turns out realistically, however, in my opinion, that not everybody wants to or should go to college.
So, it is obvious that integration has not worked at Berkeley High. Why it failed when the Berkeley plan, Integration ‘68, made integration of a diverse student body its principal goal, is another question. Parents, administrators and community leaders were all intelligent, successful and motivated people. They undertook the project with enthusiasm, funding and the best of intentions. How did the best of intentions go wrong?