I’m glad I grew up in a place with many ethnicities and with parents who were, as my sister once observed, “completely comfortable with having multi-racial friends.”
I grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City, eight miles from the George Washington Bridge. Hackensack had a diverse population—many Italian-Americans, African-Americans, and Latinos—and a small Jewish contingent, of which I was a part.
Washington Square Park (photo courtesy NYC Urbanism)
My parents, both Jewish, were color blind and imparted that attitude to me at an early age. When I was around five years old and my sister about eight, my mom and dad took us to Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. My dad frequently drove us into New York City, as he and my mom were born in Brooklyn, and my dad worked in Manhattan. He liked to show us the city.
The four of us engaged in an impromptu baseball session on that occasion. My mom was the catcher, my dad pitched, and my sister and I took turns batting, with the one not batting playing in the field. We used a rubber ball, which went pretty far if you hit it squarely. An African-American boy soon approached us. He was about my age and asked if he could play with us. He joined right in and was invaluable because when we hit the ball out on the street, he was great at dodging cars and retrieving the ball, once scaling a little gate and going down some steps, which led to a basement apartment to get the ball! We had so much fun playing together.
I also remember my mom and dad taking us to visit Al and Rae Davis, an African-American couple, in their Brooklyn brownstone home for several Christmas gatherings. My sister Jamie remembers them better than I do. She says, “There were others there too, including Davis’s friends and family. I remember how warm and welcoming they were to us. And all the good food!” That made an impression on me and my sister: my parents were completely comfortable having friends of a different race.
Growing up in Hackensack, I attended Fanny Hillers Elementary School, grades kindergarten through sixth. All the students were White. However, in sixth grade, the school system decided to integrate deliberately, and we imported two African-American boys from Beech Street Elementary School, Billy and George. They were fun to have around; that was my introduction to Black classmates.
A few years before, I had begun playing Little League baseball. Our team was sponsored by the local 7-Up factory. I had a couple of African-American teammates, including a boy named Jeffrey Johnikin, who lived in what we would now call the projects, housing for lower-income families. It was a long walk from his home to Foschini Park, where we played baseball. So, for every game, my mom and dad would pick him up in our car, drive us to the park, and return to his home after the game. That helped form a bond between Jeffrey and me.
When I entered Hackensack Junior High in seventh grade, all elementary school populations came together. I mixed with many Black classmates in gym class, and when I played baseball and basketball in eighth grade.
National Museum of African American History and Culture
That continued during my high school years, playing those two sports. We had a sophomore and junior varsity basketball team, and I was the starting point guard on the sophomore squad. One game we played was at Englewood, a predominantly Black high school.
My dad attended the game, and, afterwards, he said, “Did you realize you were the only White guy on the court?” I hadn’t even noticed, which is a tribute to how my parents raised me. My mom and dad were accepting of everyone. But my dad couldn’t help but notice that day. I am glad I grew up among students of many ethnicities in Hackensack.
I know it’s a cliché for a White person to say, “Some of my best friends are Black,” but one of mine was Isaiah Keeling, who played on my championship intramural basketball team in my senior year. Ike passed away in 2022. Both of us were shy, but he had a lovely spirit and was someone I could talk to, even after high school.
When I went to Cornell University, I met many students from upstate New York who came from lily-White towns without African-Americans. I have noticed that people who grow up in cities like that often bring their negative stereotypes of Black people or other races with them. I am thankful for my parents and Hackensack for allowing me to mix with people of different ethnicities and see that we are all just people, regardless of our background or skin color.
The experiences helped me throughout life, working and interacting with people of diverse ethnicities, especially here in the San Francisco Bay Area, a great melting pot. As a journalist, it has also helped me to be accepting of everyone I have interviewed or interacted with.
Sports are a great way to break down racial barriers. As a now-retired sportswriter who covered high school sports, I have witnessed athletes’ acceptance of teammates of all ethnicities and the camaraderie they have developed.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character . . . [where] little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little White boys and White girls as sisters and brothers.”
Perhaps there still is hope.
