To Jayson Boyd,

(re: To whom is this street closed) I can relate, I grew up in lilly white Roosevelt area of Seattle in the mid 60s, and our high school was about 3,000 students with only about l2 black students (this was prior to mandatory bussing, or other minorities other than Asian Americans moving into the neighborhood.)

And I'm glad that you said that this issue, even subconsciously doesn't matter if you lean left or right polictially, it seems to paint all of us together, and rightfully so, even those of us who do not know it consciously.  

We were a lower middle class, both of my parents worked, we were not prejudiced toward anyone of any race or nationality, and I thought this was the way it was in most cities at the time.

One time, I was asked how many black students we had, and I told them, I think about a dozen in a 3 year, 3,000 student body, and when asked what I thought of them, I said they were all pretty quiet and nice.  In hindsight, I suspect if I and about ll whites had been in a 3000 student body, primarily black, I would have been quiet and nice too.

What woke me up to the prejudice or different treatments were two things.

l. At Ft Carson, Colo, we had an EEO Army base wide meeting, and I was the designee for my battalion of about 300 soldiers.  

The question was asked, why do we basically all get along on base and on duty and on Fri/Sat nights, the whites would go to the white bars and the blacks would go to the black bars (Not segregated, just the way it was)  No one had an answer, but it made all of us think.

2.  The second is when I was called up for Army reserve duty for two weeks, about 30 of us, went from Seattle to Ft Richardson Alaska and we were assigned to an Eskimo Scout Battalion, about 300 Aleutian eskimos and without them being prejudice, we found out how it meant to be in a minority as none of our 30 of mixed races from Seattle had dealt with before.

Don Webb

Burien