Tuesday, June 22, 1999

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Learning to get along

By STEVEN G. VEGH
Staff Writer

Copyright © 1999 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

Racial and ethnic diversity are dawning slowly elsewhere in Maine. But at Portland High School, it's already high noon.

Only 2.4 percent of Mainers were people of color in 1997, according to the most recent statistics. Yet at Portland High this year, 24 percent of the 1,106 students are black, Asian or races other than white. It is the most racially diverse high school in Maine.

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This diversity is a proof of the unprecedented flow of people of color into southern Maine in recent years, created by growing numbers of African, Latino and Asian immigrants. The school's racial mix also makes Portland High a barometer of how white Mainers may react as that diversity continues to grow and spread across the state.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that by 2025, Maine's black population will have grown 32 percent, the Asian population by 122 percent, Hispanics by 134 percent, and Indians by 24 percent, compared with 1997. Maine's white population will grow about 14 percent during the same period.

At its best, Portland High School today is a happy rainbow of colors, where 30 or more different languages can be heard. Students of different races and cultures savor the camaraderie of team sports, date one another, and share friendships. "This is probably the most diverse school in the state, and I love it," says Joanna Hibbard, a senior who is white.

At its worst, ethnic groups collide in name-calling or fights. Derek Brown, a white freshman who has been in some of those fights, says a lot of conflicts would be solved if the Somalis, Asians, Hispanics and Russians all were sent to another school. "It's better to be separated," Brown says.

Animosity reached its height last spring, when fighting between white and Somali youths climaxed in the stabbing of a teen-ager outside the school. Portland police posted officers outside Portland High every day for a week, and media reports conveyed images of a racially tense inner-city school.

But daily life is usually somewhere between the extremes.

Students of color who are American-born or who have been raised in America have plenty of white friends, while others who have come recently as refugees seem to prefer to spend their time with students who have shared experiences or languages.

Most white students recognize and tolerate the school's racial mix, but spend little time "celebrating" diversity. Many know refugee students only slightly, or not at all. Their explanations include language barriers, separate classes for students without fluent English, a natural tendency to hang out with people like themselves, and a lack of incentives for reaching out.

"Almost everyone at Portland High School can tolerate — but very few embrace — the diversity," Hibbard says.

Abdi Mumye Abu, 19, from Somalia, is a junior at Portland High School, where white and minority students mostly get along but don't mix much. Abu cites a tendency for students to hang out with those of shared backgrounds. Staff photo by John Ewing

Portland High stands a block from the city's central business district and within walking distance of gritty neighborhoods in Parkside, Munjoy Hill, Bayside and the West End. But in Portland, teen-agers choose where they attend high school, and Portland High's student body comes from across the city, including suburb-like neighborhoods such as North Deering that are miles away.

Interviews with more than 50 students show that a few see racial diversity as a personal threat that must be watched, and sometimes resisted. Derek Brown is one of them.

Brown, who is 16 years old and white, says there are a few people of color in his West End neighborhood, but none on Clark Street where he lives with his mother, brother and three sisters. At home, he particularly enjoys the Discovery Channel, where programs about the sea feed his aspiration to study oceanography and work aboard ship.

At school, he particularly dislikes the Somalis, who he believes deliberately provoke him. "I'm not going to walk by somebody giving me a dirty look," he explains as some white friends listen at the coffee house where they hang out each day, a block from school.

"I'm not going to say, 'You want to fight?' I'll say, 'What's your problem?' Every time I say that, they'll start talking" — talking insults, Brown assumes, although that isn't always clear, because the Somalis respond in their own language. Not speaking English is itself aggravating to teens like Brown. A fight sometimes follows.

Brown says he may curse and use obscenities in such altercations. But, he adds, "I won't say nothing racist while I'm fighting 'em," to underscore his assertion that there is no racial bias behind his actions. "I don't have problems until they provoke it, but it doesn't come out that way in the (news and police) reports — it's 'racial violence' . . . If I walked by a white guy and he gave me a dirty look, I'd say the same thing I would to a black guy."

Brown has tried to stay out of fights this year, except for one time when he says a friend was "jumped" by Asians and needed back-up.

Brown's group says Portland High is calmer now than last spring because they proved their "pride" in the fighting at that time and, in essence, achieved peace through strength. Brown also doesn't want to be suspended from school or arrested because of fights, and he suspects other groups are less pugnacious for the same reason.

"I think we're all just being smart and mature and getting our work done, you know what I mean?" he says. Reflecting a moment, he adds, "I haven't gotten any dirty looks in a while."

But his feeling about ethnic minorities hasn't changed. He believes refugees get handouts of cash, jobs and other benefits that native-born Americans have to scratch to get. "It's our country, and they're living larger than us," he says.

As for the diversity at Portland High, Brown says that sending all Somalis, Asians, Hispanics and some Russians elsewhere would ensure peace. "There wouldn't be that option of them staring you down, or us staring them down, you know what I mean?"

Portland High freshman Derek Brown, with his dog, Brutus, thinks the way to avoid school conflicts is to separate white and minority students. Staff photo by John Ewing

White teens like Brown also complain that Somalis are standoffish. And it is true that Somali students are likely to hang out with Somalis and other refugees rather than with native-born Americans.

Adbi Mumye Abu, a 19-year-old junior, says that's partly because he has more in common with other refugees, who've faced the same kinds of hardships he has.

In Abu's case, his family once lived a good life in Mogadishu, where his father taught Arabic.

Abu was a child when the Somali civil war turned Mogadishu into a battle zone. He remembers hearing the shooting, and knows that an older brother was killed in front of him, though he can't remember the event.

Abu was 10 when his family finally escaped to Kenya around 1990. For years, they lived in a United Nations refugee camp. There were times when there wasn't enough food, and they were hungry.

The family was accepted by the United States for resettlement and moved to Portland in October 1997. Abu now lives in the Portland Housing Authority's Riverton complex with his parents, four sisters and seven brothers.

After school, Abu runs cross-country for Portland High. When it's not track season, he's likely to be at the YMCA, lifting weights or playing indoor soccer with Somali and Hispanic friends. He's on the school civil rights team, a multiracial student group that tries to reduce intolerance. He hopes to join the U.S. Navy to travel and get more education.

Even as he integrates into an American life, however, there are some things Abu cannot accept, such as American teens' off-handed use of obscenities and curses, or "bad language" as Somalis call it.

For immigrants from Muslim cultures, insults can be offenses worth shedding blood over, especially if they refer to the females in a man's family. Somalis in particular are an extremely proud people who take offense at any insult that sounds belittling.

In this context, a fight Abu found himself in last fall was almost predictable.

Abu says he was walking down a school hallway with his girlfriend, an American of black and white heritage. As they passed a group of white guys, one of the white boys bounced a ball off the girl.

"She asked, 'Why you hit me?' He swore at her," Abu recalls. A fight between Abu and the white teen-ager with the ball ensued.

The incident had an unexpected climax. "Three weeks ago, he apologized to me and said, 'I'm sorry for that day,' " Abu said of his former antagonist. "Now, we run track together."

Joanna Hibbard admits that she is an unlikely cheerleader for diversity. She grew up in North Deering with her father, a political consultant, her mother, who is a Unum executive, and a brother and sister.

Khoa Nguyen, a senior at Portland High School, eats lunch with his friends in the school's upper cafeteria. The school has two cafeterias, one used mostly by white students and the other by students of color. Staff photo by John Ewing

"I grew up in an upper-middle-class, white neighborhood. Even the public schools were homogeneous," Hibbard says. "Diversity? Virtually no ethnic diversity."

Then she went to Portland High.

"I have friends from every corner of the world there," and that has encouraged her ambition to study international affairs or linguistics, preferably overseas, she says.

Even students who won't be globe-trotting see Portland High's diversity as a foretaste of the colleges and jobs they'll be headed for outside Maine. "Diversity is the reality elsewhere in the country," Hibbard says.

Despite her enthusiasm for multi-culturalism now, Hibbard admits she didn't pay much attention to Portland High's diversity until after she visited France last summer.

"I realized there was a whole world out there, and there were little bits of it in PHS," Hibbard says. "I can't believe it took me this long."

Before that revelation, Hibbard was part of the biggest group at Portland High School: students who are tolerant of other races and ethnicities, but who stay within the comfort and familiarity of their own circle of friends.

These students disapprove of fights with racial overtones.

But neither is this student majority a part of the civil rights team, the "Yes! Diversity" club, the International Club or the student-organized International Fashion Show — activities that celebrate diversity and offer personal contact with different races and ethnicities.

Nowhere is the disinterest in race and ethnicity more obvious than in the cafeteria. At lunchtime, when every student is free to be with anyone, the teens consistently split along color lines or foreign/native-born lines.

Asians, Africans and students of color crowd each day into the "upper cafeteria" overlooking Cumberland Avenue. White students go to the separate "lower cafeteria" that looks out on the school yard behind the First Parish Church.

For outsiders visiting the school, the stark segregation can be troubling. But students of all backgrounds say they simply lunch with their own cliques.

In practice, that means white students bunch up with friends who are white. Similarly, foreign-born students relax with immigrants like themselves and speak in their home-country's language. Thus, in the "upper caf," one table will be filled with Ethiopian girls, while the next has only Cambodian boys, and so on. There are sometimes a couple of white students, just as a few students of color may be found in the lower caf, but they are exceptions. "I personally wouldn't sit in the upper caf; I don't know a single soul in the entire place," Hibbard said.

There are other, practical, reasons separating white students from those of color. Lack of English is an obvious one, and foreign-born students not fluent in English take special English-as-a-second-language classes.

Being in those classes separates refugees from the white student body, and that separation can last for years as the refugees work on their English skills.

Breaking out of that niche and making friends with American students "takes a huge effort" for refugees, Hibbard said. At the same time, white American students don't bother to reach out.

"I don't think there are very many incentives . . . other than the essence of friendship," Hibbard says. "They really don't get chastised for lacking that reach across the gap."

Now that she has new friends of different races and national origins, Hibbard says she's sometimes teased about it by some white friends.

"Other kids wouldn't want to take the risk and be friends with kids whose families are different," she says.

Risk? Different? Hibbard explains. "To bridge the gap between cultures, including languages, style of dress, ideas, and everything that is apparent in everyday life in school: that, all together, is intimidating for people.

"A lot of kids are perfectly content seeing the foreign people as part of the scenery," Hibbard added. "The diversity at PHS provides the window for understanding. A lot of kids will take hold of it, and a lot will refuse it."