Another country across the avenue

My daughter asked her 5-year-old son, Nick, if he knew why there was no school the following Monday. He answered, “Yes, because it’s Martin Luther King Day.”

She, being a teacher, probed to see what else he had to say. He added, “If it hadn’t been for that guy, Marcus and me couldn’t have been friends because of his skin color.”

What Nick said took me back to my neighborhood of decades ago. In my early teens we lived in New York City’s Spanish Harlem on the west side of Madison Avenue. Most of us were Latinos.

Across Madison on 101st Street we referred to those living on that block as “Los Morenos,” (the Dark Ones). Our Latino skin tones varied. But anyone with a preconceived notion of what a Latino looked like would never have guessed I was born in Cuba of Cuban and Puerto Rican parents. Not with my green eyes and light complexion.

We claimed the corner of that block. We would sling a Spalding rubber ball downward at the stoop and hope it would rocket over the fence on the other sidewalk on 101st Street.

Beyond that short stretch, the divide began. It was like living in a country separated by an imaginary border we each tacitly honored. They stayed on their side. We on ours.

Now I wonder why we never tried engaging them. Was it a bias learned subconsciously? If so, where had that come from? For I cannot recall any of my friends or my parents, ever saying anything racially negative, except for one instance. A tenant in our building in speaking about a female singer and TV star whispered to me, with apparent conviction, “You know, she has Negro blood in her.”

I have a vivid recollection of one day staring fixedly down that block. A few black kids stood almost at the other end of 101st Street. They looked like distant statues, barely visible, yet invisible to me as people.

That afternoon reminds me of a novel I read in college, “Invisible Man,” by Ralph Ellison. In the prologue he wrote “I am invisible because people refuse to see me.”

In my case, I hoped that with no accent when I spoke English and my “whiteness” as the definitive ruse, my Latino background would remain invisible. By sheer luck the school’s principal anglicized my name to John when my parents registered me for first grade. This would add to my cover as an adult. (I went back to Juan publicly in 2000.)

Gradually, I became more selective about sharing my ancestry. Various experiences I can remember led to and reaffirmed that decision.

A teacher’s behavior toward me became less cordial when he learned of my Cuban/Puerto Rican background. A fellow student and close friend joked about Puerto Ricans as if it didn’t apply to me.

In my early twenties, a policeman stopped me for double parking on a busy crosstown street. My driver’s license had me as John Anthony Negroni. He said, “You’re Italian,” and waved me on.

In my corporate days we had a position to fill. The top executive known for helping employees regardless of their ethnicity or color, said, “We can’t have a third black in a department of eleven.”

And as a consultant I was asked to coach an up-and-coming Hispanic leader. The hiring executive, a Caucasian, said to me, “I’m glad you speak Spanish and look like one of us.”

These are but a few subtle and not-so-subtle examples of why I became guarded about who I am. Were any of these exchanges about prejudice? Perhaps! Or were they a consequence of a learned “subconscious bias,” possibly the reason for our never crossing that imaginary border on the block across the avenue?

How far have we come since those days in Spanish Harlem? Painfully, instances keep popping up prompting doubts about our progress. So, I’ll leave it to others more knowledgeable to weigh in on where we are.

But I will speak for myself. My 5-year-old grandson’s innocent insight about his friendship with Marcus gives me hope we’ve evolved beyond that divide on 101st Street.