Bridging the Cultural Gap and Correcting Some Stereotypes About Blacks

People have some odd ideas about Naomi Rainey.

When she travels to mostly white schools and civic organizations to discuss “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Being Black But Were Afraid to Ask,” she usually gets the same three questions.

“Do you sunburn?” (Yes.)

“Can you sing?” (No.)

“Can you dance?” (No.)

Rainey, 42, an administrator in the Compton Unified School District, recently won honors for what she calls her efforts to “bring people together rather than keep them apart.” In separate awards, the Compton district managers and teachers honored Rainey for her service to the schools and community.

Her commitment to attacking stereotypes began more than a decade ago, Rainey said, when she was invited to speak to mostly white high school students in Irvine about cultural diversity.

“I was surprised to find out the children knew so little about black culture or any culture other than their own,” Rainey said. “I’ve been on the circuit ever since.”

Rainey has spoken before dozens of groups, from Orange County Rotary clubs to an engagement at UCLA’s Royce Hall. In a project she initiated for the Compton schools after the recent riots, Rainey paired white business executives with 20 black and Latino students from Compton for lunch “so the kids could see what (the executives) do,” she said, and the executives “could see what the kids are like.”

She also promotes human relations clubs on the district’s campuses and has joined efforts to raise money for the Blue Ribbon Scholarship Fund, which awards $5,000 to eight seniors each year. Blue Ribbon winners have gone on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UCLA, UC Irvine and various state schools, Rainey said.

Rainey, who lives in Long Beach, traces her motivation to her childhood. She grew up in Aberdeen, Miss., and remembers “going to a separate, but not equal, school. I remember sitting upstairs in the movies. I remember being thirsty and passing water fountains because they were for whites.”

What sticks most in her mind is the time her mother was hospitalized. “Here were all these black people squeezed into a small section of a huge hospital and told they could only come in and out through the back. We were paying the same as everybody else. Those things bothered me.”

As a teen-ager, Rainey’s sister invited her to come live with her family in Los Angeles to attend school. Rainey graduated from a San Fernando Valley high school with only a handful of other black students. She went to Cal State Long Beach, where she received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in education. It was there that she began devising ways to promote diversity.

In the future, Rainey hopes to write a children’s book based on the responses she has received from her talks. “There’s a value in education,” she said. “What I’m doing is slow. But if I reach one person and they change the way they act, I’ve made a difference. I strongly believe,” she added, “that I’m doing something right.”

A Cerritos High School chemistry and physics teacher has received a $3,500 grant from a fellowship program sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Rod Ziolkowski will study “Relativity, Uncertainty and Chaos Reflected in the Visual Arts,” hoping to investigate how the creative process makes scientists and artists view the world in new ways.

For the first time, the Long Beach Civil Service Commission has elected a Latina as president. Olivia Herrera will oversee the administration of the merit system and the Civil Service rules and regulations for city employees.

Herrera has served on many community boards, including the Long Beach Commission on Economic Opportunities, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Head Start, and the Westside and East Long Beach neighborhood centers.

The commission meets each Wednesday at 8 a.m. Meetings are open to the public.

Long Beach resident Andrea Clemons, 23, recently left for Mauritania as a Peace Corps volunteer. The 1991 Pepperdine University graduate will teach English in the African country.

For the second year, Yasmin Redoblado, 13, of La Mirada has won first place in the annual spelling bee for parochial schools.

Yasmin beat 54 other students competing from 11 Catholic schools in La Habra, Montebello, Norwalk, Pico Rivera, Santa Fe Springs, La Mirada, Buena Park and Whittier.