Toi Derricotte

Black in a White Neighborhood, 1977-1978

A teacher and writer, Toi Derricotte responds in these diary entries to the humiliation she suffered in Upper Montclair, New Jersey--a white, middle-class, suburban community in which she and her husband were among the first African-Americans. Her experiences, she notes, were compounded by light skin, which made some people mistake her for white and allowed them to make racial slurs in her presence.

July 1977

Yesterday I put my car in the shop. The neighborhood shop. When I went to pick it up I held a conversation with the man who worked on it. I told him I had been afraid to leave the car there at night with the keys in it. "Don't worry," he said. You don't have to worry about stealing in Upper Montclair as long as the niggers don't move in." I couldn't believe it. I hoped I had heard him wrong. "What did you say?" I asked. He repeated the same thing without hesitation.

In the past my anger would have swelled quickly. I would have blurted out something, hotly demanded he take my car down off the rack immediately though he had not finished working on it, and taken off in a blaze. I love that reaction. The only feeling of power one can possibly have in a situation in which there is such a sudden feeling of powerlessness is to "do" something, handle the situation. But for some reason yesterday, I, who have been more concerned lately with understanding my feelings than in reacting, repressed my anger. Instead of reacting, I leaned back in myself, dizzy with pain, fear, sadness, and confusion.

I go home and sit with myself for an hour, trying to grasp the feeling--the odor of self-hatred, the biting stench of shame.

December 1977

About a month ago we had the guy next door over for dinner. He's about twenty-six. The son of a banker. He lived in a camper truck for a year and came home recently with his dog to "get himself together."

After dinner we got into a conversation about the Hartford Tennis Club, where he is the swimming instructor. I asked him, hesitantly, but unwilling not to get this firsthand information, if blacks were allowed to join. (Everybody on our block belongs

to Hartford, were told about "the club" and asked to join as soon as they moved in. We were never told about it or asked to join.) Unemotionally, he said, "No. The man who owns the club won't let blacks in." I said, "You mean the people on this block who have had us over to dinner and who I have invited to my home for dinner, the people I have lived next door to for three years, these same people are ones I can't swim in a pool with?" "That's the rule," he said, as if he were stating a fact with mathematical veracity and as if I would have no feelings. . . .

May 1978

I had a dinner party last week. Saturday night, the first dinner party in over a year. The house was dim & green with plants & flowers, light & orange like a fresh fruit tart. . . .

& i made sangria with white wine adding strawberries & apples & oranges & limes & lemon slices & fresh squeezed juice in an ice clear pitcher with cubes like glass lighting the taste with sound & color.

& the table was abundant.

& they came. one man was a brilliant conversationalist & his wife was happy to offer to help in the kitchen & one woman was quiet & seemed rigid as a fortress. . . . & her husband was a doctor & introduced himself as "dr." & i said "charmed. contessa toinette."

& we were black & white together, we were middle class & we had "been to europe" & the doctors were black & the businessmen were white & the doctors were white & the businessmen were black & the bankers were there too.

& the black people sat on this side of the room & the white people sat on that & they ate cherried chocolates with dainty fingers & told stories.

& soon I found that one couple belonged to the Hartford Club & my heart closed like my eyes narrowing on that corner of the room on that conversation like a beam of light & they said "it isn't our fault. it's the man who owns it." & i was angry & i said it is your fault for you belong & no one made you & suddenly i wanted to belong i wanted them to let me in or die & wanted to go to court to battle to let crosses burn on my lawn let anything happen they will i will go to hell i will break your goddamned club apart don't give me shit anymore.

bruce said it is illegal & if we wanted to we could get in no matter what the man at the top did & everyone is blaming it on that one ugly man & behind him they hide their own ugliness & behind his big fat ass they hid their puny hopes & don't want to be seen so god will pass over their lives & not touch, hide their little house & little dishwasher, hide like the egyptians hid their children from the face of god, hide their soaked brown evil smelling odor dripping ass. and if they were saying don't blame me please throwing up their hands begging not to be seen, but i see them, my eye like a cat seeing in to x-ray the bird's blood-brain: i will not pass, like god, i will not pass over their evil.

the next day bruce & i talk about it. he still doesn't want to pay 200 dollars to belong. he says it's not worth it to fight about, he doesn't want to fight to belong to something stupid, would rather save his energy to fight for something important.

important.

what is important to me?

no large goal like integrating a university. just living here on this cruddy street, taking the street in my heart like an arrow.

Toi Derricotte. "The Black Notebooks." Ariadne's Thread: A Collection of Contemporary Women's Journals. Lynn Lifshin, ed.

New York: Harper & Row, 1982. 281-285.