Sunday, April 27, 2008
Complex tension sad, but not new
Shanna Flowers
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What's happening at Maple Grove Apartments in Roanoke is not a new story.
It's disturbing, but sadly, not new.
The rock-throwing, the window-breaking, the taunting, the fear, the escalating tensions between African refugees and black Americans at the rundown complex in Northwest Roanoke make up the story of humanity.
It is the story of different waves of European immigrants at the turn of the century scrapping among earlier arrivals to find their place in America. It's the story of Boston schools in the 1970s. It's the story of today's virulent call for immigration reform that would build an actual wall along America's southern border.
What's occurring at Maple Grove is the story of what happens when people are intolerant of others who are different.
A few whites live in the complex, but they haven't been accused of being at the core of the troubles. The other residents -- the black Americans and the African immigrants -- share the same hue, but they speak differently. They dress differently. They come from different cultures. Different worlds. Different experiences.
Within the same, small complex, they segregate themselves. The American blacks live largely in apartments on the north side of the courtyard, and refugees on the south side.
"They will take our balls," 12-year-old immigrant Habibo Abdiaziz said of the black American children. "All of the Somali people, they [the black Americans] bother us."
"I don't pick on them because they're African. We're all Africans," Tia Coles, 15, said one night last week as she stood outside her apartment. "The Africans always starting something with the American kids."
She boasted to me she had kicked out one window of a refugee family's apartment, saying one of the children had picked on her younger brother.
Her mother, Cassandra Coles, said she hasn't had a problem with the Africans. When she moved in about six months ago, she said they gave her a few nasty looks. Beyond that, "I can't even begin to tell you how this all got started."
The apartment complex has been a favored destination for refugees from Somalia and other nations for about five years. But reacting to recent complaints about rock-throwing and Somali children getting beaten by black American kids, refugee workers began looking elsewhere in Roanoke for apartments for the refugees.
The hostility may have reached a zenith last weekend. What began as a bus-stop fight Friday afternoon between a black American girl and a Somali boy ended with the girl's mother threatening African families, the Somalis said.
By Monday, the Africans kept 16 of their children home from Westside Elementary School.
"When we get on the bus, they will kick you," said Habibo, who is in the fifth grade.
Tension in a contained community is bad enough by itself. But the economic pressures of trying to meet basic necessities and the blighted living conditions that mark Maple Grove are bound to exacerbate it.
On top of everyday concerns, said tenant Tracy Reyes, who is white, there are worries about people fighting and "wondering if my window will be broken when I come home."
Habibo, a poised and determined girl, said the tension she feels at home follows her to school. In a lilt that distinguishes her fluent English, she talked about being targeted by about four black American students.
"They tease me about Africa, about my clothes," she said, toying with her head wrap. "When they start fussing at me, I fuss at them."
Daniel Hale of the Roanoke NAACP told me Friday that the chapter plans to get involved to see if it can help resolve residents' conflicts as well as look into their housing conditions.
Asho Mohamed, 20, best articulated the need for the community's black and African residents to come together.
"We are a neighborhood," the young Somali woman said. "We are the same color and the same black."
Shanna Flowers' column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
