My Neighborhood, Part 2

Editor’s note: In 1983, Ishmael Reed published “My Oakland, There Is a There There, Part I,” a much lauded essay that was later anthologized as “My Neighborhood.” Reed’s piece chronicled his family’s search for “home” in towns throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Along the way, Reed encountered both quiet discrimination—cold, unwelcoming stares—and confrontational racial epithets shouted by white teenagers driving along otherwise serene suburban streets. Eventually, Reed and his family settled in a large Queen Anne Victorian and found the community they sought in their North Oakland neighborhood. But even there, acceptance didn’t come easily; it had to be earned.

In 1979, my partner, Carla Blank, a writer, choreographer, and director; our daughter, Tennessee; and I moved from the hills of El Cerrito to the flatlands of Oakland. It was my return to the kind of neighborhood that I grew up in, a black neighborhood. Upon arrival, I was confronted by the patriarchs who managed the block. It was as though I was submitting a job application. They wanted to be sure that we would observe the standards of the block. This was basically a black working-class neighborhood. Maybe they thought that we’d infect the neighborhood with our bohemian attitudes. I was a professor and writer. Carla was one of the pioneers of postmodern dance. At the time of our moving in, she and her codirector, Jody Roberts, were running the Children’s Troupe of Roberts + Blank. There was slight harassment