Class Split by Uproar Over Reading Assignment : Education: Some Ventura County parents complain about the content of Richard Wright’s ‘Black Boy.’ Others defend it as a valuable lesson in bigotry and deprivation.

Nearly half a century after it was published, Richard Wright’s searing account of growing up poor and black in the segregated South has split a Ventura County high school honors class into two groups.

Parents objecting to what they say are amoral and violent messages in “Black Boy” have insisted that their ninth- and 10th-grade children be given an alternate text. Out of 68 students in the two Fillmore High School English class sections, 11 now spend the class period in the library, reading a novel about Eastern European immigrants.

These parents raised such a furor that the district has called a special parent-faculty conference today to discuss the issue.

“The title seemed fairly aggressive to me,” said Brian Botstone, who became concerned when his son mentioned the assignment last month.

Flipping through the text only confirmed Botstone’s fears. “I know it’s reality, but being reality doesn’t make it worthwhile,” he said. “This is not conducive to teaching people what civilized people are supposed to behave like.”

Many other parents, however, defend Wright’s autobiography as a valuable lesson in bigotry and deprivation.

“This community is very, very prejudiced and there are lots of (religious) fundamentalists who feel it would be great if we could put blinders over our kids,” said Ruth Prado, whose son is in the class. “But I think it’s important for my son to know what life is all about.”

Many of the students reading “Black Boy” say it is the best work they have read all year. “The book made me think about what’s really out there,” said Mark Prado, 15, Ruth Prado’s son. “I think something like that could happen to me and it makes me think I should never be prejudiced against anybody.”

The controversy caught teacher Andrea Allen by surprise. The book is part of the regular honors curriculum and when she last taught it two years ago, not one parent objected.

“I think the book is wonderful,” she said. “I tell the kids: ‘When you are reading it, if you are not feeling any emotional pain, then something is wrong with the way you are reading it. I want you to take a good look at what man can do to man.’ ”

It is precisely that message that critics say made “Black Boy” a milestone in African American literature. Over time, the book has become required reading in high schools and universities around the country.

“Wright was one of the first black writers to try to focus on the rage that arises from the black urban experience,” said Richard Yarborough, an associate professor of English and Afro-American Studies at UCLA.

Wright described his childhood and adolescence as a minefield fraught with bigotry and physical and mental abuse--from his black friends and relatives, mired in their poverty and ignorance, as well as from whites.

No matter how he attempted to cope, Wright found himself unable to fit within the narrow, confining roles prescribed to blacks in turn-of-the-century America.

“I knew what was wrong with me, but I could not correct it,” he wrote. “The words and actions of white people were baffling signs to me. I was living in a culture and not a civilization and I could learn how that culture worked only by living with it.

“While standing before a white man I had to figure out how to perform each act and how to say each word,” he continues. “I could not help it. I could not grin. . . . I could not react as the world in which I lived expected me to; that world was too baffling, too uncertain.”

Wright graphically describes key events in his life to drive home how abhorrent conditions and abusive relationships can lead to a lifetime of resentment and occasional outbursts. One such description that some in Fillmore mention repeatedly is the “kitten passage.”

Wright writes how, as a child, he hated his father’s constant beatings and temper. One day, a meowing kitten drove Wright’s father into a rage and he bellowed at his son to “ ‘kill that damn thing. . . . Do anything, but get it away from here!’ ”

Seething at this unreasonable reaction, the boy decided to take his father literally. He quickly strung a noose and hanged the kitten.

“It gasped, slobbered, spun, doubled, clawed the air frantically,” he writes. “Finally, its mouth gaped and its pink-white tongue shot out stiffly.”

This is the kind of writing that alarms Marion Holladay, whose daughter Spring, a 10th-grader, is reading Willa Cather’s “My Antonia” instead of “Black Boy.”

“I know there are a lot of books out there that are better quality than this,” she said. “I don’t understand how somebody could read it and not see what’s wrong with it.”

Allen said she began rereading the book after the complaints and quickly realized her mistake in not sending a notification letter home.

After all, she said, this is a district where parents regularly object to their children reading “Catcher in the Rye,” and “Lord of the Flies.”

“Yep, I should’ve seen it,” she said. “And for my own sanity I will do that next time. It is very difficult to teach a class when some of your students are in the library.”

But for each parent who refuses to get near the book, there are many others reading it because of all the uproar and finding they like it very much.

“The reality of life is that it’s not always sweet and children need to be exposed to that kind of thing,” said Jan Lee, whose son Ryan, 14, is in the class. “If a child who is 14 years old goes out and kills a kitten, then they have a real problem and it’s not the book that caused it.”