Should he have mentioned it?
Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 12:00 a.m.
Retiring Chester County School Superintendent Larry Heath spoke to the Rotary Club last week.
At one point laying this out, he hesitated.He discussed why he is retiring now. He says he wants to spend more time with his family, specifically his youngest daughter.
“I probably shouldn’t say this,” he said. But he went ahead and did.
In the early ’90s, after being with the district for almost 20 years, he was promoted to assistant superintendent. He and his wife started looking at homes in Chester.
They were told by a real estate agent that a home on York Street was under contract. Heath had a friend, “of lighter skin color,” who was also looking. When that person looked at that house, they were not told that. The Heaths decided not to move here.
There are reasons why Heath maybe shouldn’t have mentioned it. First, many years have passed. America has elected a black president. Things have changed. Maybe such things don’t happen here any more.
We don’t think it much matters who showed the home. Was it the agent’s own active bias? Or was it the agent swallowing down the disgust, as he or she just did what a homeowner wanted. What matters is someone had that bias here.
Some people questioned his commitment to the county, because his family wasn’t here. Heath maintained an apartment here, and on weekends commuted back to his home a couple of counties away. It was not so far that, in the face of an emergency, he couldn’t make it back in time.
For example, the last time Chester County had a big snowfall, Heath was here, in the county, almost alone at the district office, making calls.
His term as superintendent hasn’t been a large part of his time in Chester County, but he has had a long and complete career here, moving up from being a teacher, right to the top.
It’s a remarkable success story for anyone in education, no matter their color. He should be proud of what he has done here, and we should be proud of him as well.
It might lessen that career achievement for some who will now focus on this revelation and forget everything else he has done.
Yet we see a clear example of someone who devoted a career to us, even after being made to feel unwelcome to live among us.
Most importantly, this is a pernicious kind of racism. It’s subtle and usually hidden.It might go on every day, but we almost never, ever find out about it. We need to know that it happens, and we need to do our best to make sure it never happens again.
