Y E S T E R D A Y

The showdown at San Leandro High
Part One
By Ira Eisenberg
A battle between parents and gay-rights advocates may be a preview of the country's next great culture war
(06/01/98)

- - - - - - - - - -

D R A M A++Q U E E N

What's the worst thing your mother ever did to you? Send your submission to theDrama Queen for a Day contest

- - - - - - - - - -

T A B L E++T A L K

Culture wars: How do you shelter your kids from the negative influences of popular culture? Join the discussion in Table Talk's Mothers area

- - - - - - - - - -

R E C E N T L Y

Infant Revolution
By Dawn MacKeen
The children who are giving Nike a dressing down
(05/29/98)

No turning back
By Sallie Tisdale
At what point do you need to tell your child he can't come home again?
(05/28/98)

My son, the cross-dresser
By Lisen Stromberg
Why are tomboys cute but "janegirls" weird?
(05/27/98)

Back to my future
By Lori Leibovich
Dancing cheek to cheek with your high school self
(05/26/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINKARCHIVES

- - - - - - - - - -

Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

- - - - - - - - - -

San Leandro is a blue-collar town in the throes of a painful transition. Located on the industrial east shore of San Francisco Bay just south of Oakland, San Leandro boomed with defense production during World War II and basked in post-war prosperity through the '50s and '60s. Then the factories and warehouses began closing or moving away, reducing the region to a rust belt. San Leandro's working-class, white ethnic majority -- many of them descendants of Portuguese farmers and fishermen who first settled this place early in the century -- have seen their living standards decline and their security evaporate over the past three decades. Some have moved away, and those who remain often feel threatened by the growing number of immigrants and people of color moving into their neighborhoods, schools, churches and even their jobs. Seven years ago, some black students from San Leandro High had a run-in with local police at a nearby strip mall and rampaged for hours through the school. Teachers who witnessed the event tell me it was the work of "a few well-known thugs from Oakland." But African-American political leaders and others blamed it on pent-up rage at white hostility. Deservedly or not, San Leandro acquired the reputation as a community of intolerant rednecks.

Yet San Leandro today is one of the most racially mixed, culturally diverse and socially integrated communities in the Bay Area. Despite its changing demographics, the town also has retained its essential character -- politically liberal (some 80 percent of voters are registered Democrats) but socially conservative. Life for most citizens here still revolves around work, family, church and community. And the flap over gay rights at San Leandro High has caused a growing number -- newcomers and old-timers alike, white and black -- to feel betrayed by a public school system that can't seem to educate their kids yet appears intent on disabusing them of values these people hold dear.

Viewed from a distance, San Leandro High appears sturdy and well-maintained, a model American high school. But closer inspection reveals a different picture: jammed hallways, battered lockers, peeling paint, decrepit furniture, overcrowded classrooms, textbooks in short supply and woefully out of date, computers rarely available in classrooms and the mingling odors of cafeteria grease, industrial strength disinfectant, backed-up toilets and unwashed gym clothes. Built a half-century ago to hold less than 1,000 students, the archaic structure now must accommodate nearly twice that number. This is the town's only high school; there used to be two others, but they were sold off to developers in the 1970s and '80s, when families were mostly leaving San Leandro, and have long since been bulldozed out of existence. The halls of San Leandro High are so crowded these days that it has become a challenge to get from one class to another on time, and the din is oppressive. More than once, while trapped in a jammed stairwell, a troubling thought crossed my mind; what if an earthquake or fire struck right now? Or some juvenile jerk suddenly exploded a cherry bomb in our midst?

On the walls of the attendance office, photographs are displayed of graduating classes going back several generations -- a virtual triptych of the demographic changes the school has gone through. Panning from past to present, one can see the faces change from mostly white to mostly black and brown. Today, two out of three San Leandro High students are African-American, Hispanic or Asian. Many are products of Oakland's notoriously dysfunctional school system, a growing number speak little or no English and test scores have plunged in recent years. The campus seems relatively free of gangs and drugs, but racial and ethnic tensions are palpable and self-conscious efforts to "celebrate diversity" only aggravate the problem. I've heard Hispanics mutter about African-Americans getting most of the attention, African-Americans grousing about being honored for only one month while gays are celebrated for two and kids of Portuguese heritage voicing umbrage at getting no special recognition. Only Asians appear content to go their way largely unnoticed.

Members of the Gay/Straight Alliance on campus insist gay and lesbian students and teachers are in constant fear for their safety at school, but hard evidence to support this claim is scarce. The ninth-grade teacher who came out told local newspaper reporters and Principal Aikens that she had been harassed by students and even threatened with death after telling her class she was a lesbian. But according to senior district administrators, she never sought disciplinary action against any student, and local police say she filed no formal complaint of a death threat with them. The two girls whose public displays of mutual affection caused such a stir claim students insulted and "threw things" at them in the halls, but no culprits were identified.

There is, of course, ample reason to be concerned about the welfare of homosexual youth. Gay teenagers are dramatically more at risk than others for drug abuse, academic failure, physical violence, psychological disorder and suicide as a consequence of being "shamed into invisibility, silence and despair," to borrow a phrase from the G/SA's mission statement on file with the San Leandro Unified School District. But the G/SA has failed to document any cases of gays or lesbians being threatened, harassed or assaulted at San Leandro High. I taught there nearly every day that school was in session last year, including summer school, and saw any number of kids who were clearly (and apparently comfortably) "out" -- and no one seemed nonplused by the fact.

That is not to say that students at SLHS are typically polite and respectful with one another. Street culture -- some of it authentic but most of it emulated -- prevails there. Even many middle-class kids sport "baggies" and $150 gym shoes, and trade the vilest insults with one another. They call it "acting ghetto," but rarely is any evil intent involved. There is also a certain rough democracy about their offensiveness; hardly a group or difference is spared. "Every day I walk down these halls and every day I hear a woman being called a 'slut' or 'whore' and a man being called a 'dog'," student Tamika Tolliver ruefully observed in the November issue of the school newspaper. Teenagers commonly apply the term "gay" pejoratively to anything or anyone they don't like or consider dumb, and "faggot" still echoes through the halls of San Leandro High, as it does in most high schools, but not nearly as often as "nigger." If homosexuals are getting their fair share of verbal abuse, it's not because they are being singled out.

I've never seen or heard of anyone at San Leandro High getting beaten up for being gay or lesbian, and campus supervisors I've talked to say they haven't either. The two fistfights that have broken out in classes of mine have both involved (apparently) heterosexual girls. A zero-tolerance policy toward hate speech has long been in force at the high school, and teachers are quick to write up students whom they observe denigrating another's race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.

The real issue at San Leandro High is not safety but normative values and their place in the classroom. Gay activists see the public schools as a bully pulpit from which to exorcise the evil of homophobia from the souls of the young. But people who see homosexuality as a sin, a sickness or an unhealthy lifestyle worry that activist teachers may be imposing misguided values on their children -- and point to the case of English teacher and G/SA leader Karl Debro. "I've been outspoken on gay and racial issues," says Debro, one of just two African-American males remaining on the SLHS teaching staff. "A black guy who speaks out on these issues scares a lot of folks in this community." Debro has been a vocal exponent of the view -- embraced as dogma by the G/SA and Gay/Lesbian/Straight Education Network -- that the quest for gay rights is as legally valid and morally compelling as the historic black struggle for civil rights.

It is a notion some other African-Americans have considerable trouble with. Shortly before Thanksgiving, a popular black physical education teacher, Matt Walker, submitted his resignation. "I quit because I just couldn't deal with the school promoting the gay and lesbian lifestyle," the Pentecostal Christian said. "I don't hold a grudge against anyone. I just couldn't continue working under those conditions." Walker was promptly hired by the Oakland Unified School District, and now teaches at Fremont High. "They didn't hurt me," he observed, "but they sure hurt those kids." San Leandro High "is so divided," according to Walker, "and they kept trying to figure out what side I was on. Karl Debro would throw race into the issue, like if you didn't go along with homosexuality it was no different than racism, and I told him the two things just don't equal out in my mind."

N E X T+P A G E: A bitter exchange of public insults