They seemed to have it all figured out. They had a large house a block from the ocean; they were attractive and well dressed; they took expensive vacations. Today Ms. Beneath the placid surface, however, Ms. The Basziles fight back, calling in the F.
A powerful, beautifully written memoir about coming of age as a black girl in an exclusive white suburb in "integrated," post-Civil Rights California in the s and s. At six years of age, after winning a foot race against a white classmate, Jennifer Baszile was humiliated to hear her classmate explain that black people "have something in their feet to make them run faster than white people. The next morning, Jennifer's father accompanied her to school, careful to "assert himself as an informed and concerned parent and not simply a big, black, dangerous man in a first-grade classroom.