Being Black at BFA Fairfax

A Dirtroad Diamond (Prologue)    "Parents/ Immediate Family Culture/ Environment Away From School"

In order to fully understand the context of my day-to-day life in high school, there is a necessary backstory that must be included to paint my experience in the proper light.  My parents never married and were only together for a total of four years.  My mother met my father, Paris Delane, in 1997.  She was invited to one of his shows by a mutual friend in Vermont then one thing led to another, they started seeing each other, and on October 12th of 1999, Moses Cheyenne Delane was a living breathing human being, and I was born in Chicago, Illinois.  My mother and father had a toxic relationship.  Many of the lasting memories my mother has of Paris are his episodes of lying, cheating, and physical and emotional abuse. By November of 2000, my mother feared for her life and my safety.  She fled from Chicago to stay with my grandmother who was living in Cambridge, Vermont.   

The most influential parts of my family culture come from my grandmother, Margot Serowy, or "Omi".

Omi was born on a farm in Angerburg, East Prussia (now Russia) during WW2 and was displaced from her home as a seven-year-old girl during a Russian invasion. The Russians were ordered to expel all Germans from Poland, and because “Serowy” sounded Polish, my great-grandmother, my great-uncle, and Omi were forced from their homes in October of 1944.  At seven years old, Omi had to care for both her mother and her middle brother, who was fighting a ramped Typhoid fever while traveling from East Prussia to East Germany, with only one small wagon, as they searched for my great-great-grandmother in Gumbinnen, East Germany.   

Not everyone made it.

Omi’s middle brother was sent to Siberia and died on the train ride there before ever reaching his destination.  Omi witnessed entire families fall through the ice on their wagons while trying to escape the Russian Invasion.  It took another two years after the war ended for Omi’s mother to convince the soldiers overseeing them to finally give them their freedom.  When they were free, they made their way to Mecklenburg, East Germany to reunite with Omi’s father, and not long after, Omi and her mother were able to escape into West Germany thanks to the help of Omi’s eldest brother.  Omi's eldest brother was a soldier who was stationed in a coal mine in East Germany.  He was somehow able to take advantage of his special privileges to help Omi escape to West Germany.  Once she reached West Germany on her second attempt to cross the border, Omi started her early childhood education, married at 18, and then immigrated to the United States as a 21-year-old.  In the years since moving to Vermont in 1981, Omi has used her artwork to cope with the many traumatic experiences she was forced to endure as a youth in East Prussia and built a reputation as an artist.

I had my first memories at our house in Cambridge, Vermont and I would spend the entirety of my childhood being raised by my mother’s side of the family.  Omi wanted Paris to have ZERO influence on my life after fully understanding how he had treated my mother Verena.  She didn’t want me to fall victim to his natural ability to charm people or allow him to get my hopes up in anticipation of realities that would never come.   The cultural values on my mother’s side come predominately from my grandmother because our family is fairly small. As a child, Omi taught me many things.  She taught me to always finish my every bite of food on my plate because there are people who aren’t fortunate enough to have food every night. She taught me to love and appreciate my family members because we only have so many.  Growing up I compared my experience to Omi's childhood in the war, and that made me appreciate every opportunity that ever came my way.   We would eventually move out of the Cambridge house to an apartment in Winooski after my mother met my future stepfather, Jordan Gullikson.  We quickly moved again to a larger place in Winooski when my younger sibling, Sid Gullikson, was born in 2004.  After finishing my kindergarten year in Winooski, my family moved to an old farmhouse on Buck Hollow Rd in Fairfax, Vermont.  I started my career at Bellows Free Academy Fairfax as a 5-year-old 1st grader.  Traditionally, Fairfax would have had 5-year-olds taking kindergarten classes but because Winooski allowed me to start school a year early, I was able to just join the first graders. Elementary school was fairly good for me.  I had lots of friends, participated in sports, and had great relationships with my teachers.

Elementary school was a bit of a blur, as anyone’s would be, but there were some pivotal events that influenced my headspace throughout the rest of my childhood.  As a first or second-grader, I remember one of my classmates asking me if I was black and I legitimately didn’t understand the question. I remember comparing my skin color to the colors in my Crayola box and thinking, “I’m not black, I’m tan”.  I had never questioned why all of my immediate family had a different color skin tone than me.  It never came up because it wasn’t ever an issue.  When I was little it was very easy for me to blend in among my other Vermonters because everything just felt natural.  My mother was white, my younger sibling was white, my stepdad was white, and the overwhelming population of my statewide community was white.  Jordan and Verena separated at the end of second grade and my mother started seeing new people throughout the following years.  

Although I take great pride in my family's ability to fight through their adversities, I also understand we all have our downfalls at times.  My mother had been through a lot and looked for the solution to our problems at the bottom of a bottle.   During third grade, I remember coming home from a basketball practice and finding my mother passed out drunk on the living room floor.  By fourth grade, I was smart enough to try hiding her bottles of wine and cigarettes.  This was also the year I was told why my father was never in the picture.  I had known that Paris never paid child support and we never talked about him around the house, but it wasn't until fourth grade that I knew Paris had abused my mother.  By fifth grade, I was smart enough to know my mother would ground me if she couldn't find her wine.  At the end of 6th grade, my mother ran into an old friend who she used to bartend with and spontaneously moved my younger sibling and me to Portland, Oregon to live with him during the summer before 7th grade.  My mother stayed in that relationship for 8 months before we decided to move back to our house in Fairfax.  As a youth, I had to learn to be adaptable.

Being Black at BFA Fairfax - The Echoes Through the Hallway/ My Experience as an Athlete/ Leaving BFA

My home environment was never stable enough for me to feel like I had a true support system behind the scenes between my mother’s drinking and my ever-changing home environment.  At this point in life, my standards of living were fairly low because I was happy as long as everyone around me was being safe.  School was my escape, I was just happy to be there.

I remember one day during eighth grade I was especially when I walked into the building that morning.  The night before I had made a post on Facebook that read “20 likes and I’ll wear my hair in a ponytail for my basketball game tomorrow!”.  I received well over 40 likes so I was very excited to make my appearance at school that day.  Game day at BFA Fairfax means all athletes are required to be dressed in a collared shirt and tie.  That day I decided to also wear my long curly hair in a ponytail.  

I was drinking from the water fountain in my eighth-grade hallway between lunch and recess when I heard a loud echoing voice from down the hallway.

“NIGGER!!!”

I turned my head at the sound of the booming voice and saw a student from my eighth-grade class dressed in a camo hat and cargo shorts, yelling at me from down the hall.  

One of the eighth-grade homeroom teachers walked out of her classroom because she had heard my classmate.

She looked at me...

She looked down the hall at the student...   

Looked back at me... 

Hesitated...

Then sulked back into her room.

She said nothing to either of us.

This moment was my introduction to the word “nigger”.  The "N-Word" would haunt me throughout the entirety of my high school career in more than a few ways.  Beginning in eighth grade spanning into my sophomore year of high school it became popular to play this game called “Say it Louder”. Traditionally, someone would whisper the word “penis” in a public setting and students would go back and forth saying the phrase louder and louder until someone gets caught or someone fails to say the word louder than the person before.  Students at Fairfax adapted this game and played with the word “nigger” instead.   In the hallways between classes, in the lunchroom while we ate, and on the bus rides that took us to and from school, the "N-Word" hummed passed my ears like a pesky mosquito that I just couldn't kill.  Students thought that calling me "nigger" made them tough.  It took balls to say the "N-word" in front of the black guy.  I learned to tune them out and let my reputation speak for itself in our community.  My teachers liked me, my coaches liked me, our administration liked me, and I was passionate about receiving my education.  

Basketball

It was easier to tune out people who I was not friends with but sometimes my friends were racist too.  I started playing basketball in third grade I would always hear similar jokes about my race at practice growing up.  When I was performing well, people would say “Oh, of course he’s doing well! He’s the only black guy so he should be the best player on the team, right?”.

These kinds of statements put pressure on me to perform well because I knew that people in my community were paying more attention to me, but this standard was harder to continuously achieve year after year as I grew older.   When I was under-performing, people would say “Oh, shouldn’t he be playing better? He’s the black guy and he should be the best player on the team.”

This feeling tore me apart.  Was I somehow disappointing my race by not being the best basketball player at all times?  During my freshmen year of high school, I played on the JVB basketball team and my own teammates would play "Say it Louder" on the bus rides to and from our away games.  When I was eventually promoted to JVA, the word “nigger” changed to “nigga” and began to plague my life in a whole different way.  During my sophomore year, my JVA teammates kicked me out of our team group chat because they wanted to feel more comfortable saying “nigga” openly.  They thought using the N-word was cool and in the process excluded me from a sense of belonging among my teammates.

Nigga was their word.  Not mine.

They added me back to our chat a few days later and told me they were kidding, but that underlying feeling of exclusion never truly went away.  I continued playing basketball for all four years of high school and eventually worked my way up to the Varsity squad for my senior year.  I had grown up watching great players wear our maroon and white jerseys and I wanted to be like them.  I wanted to lace up my sneakers and be one of the twelve guys who had the honor of representing the town of Fairfax on the basketball court.  Looking back, I can say I did that.

However, the racial tension ate at me and eventually drove me away from basketball and toward a new passion.  

Ultimate Frisbee

I fell in love with Ultimate right from the start because I felt like it was an environment where I could compete as an athlete without the underlying feeling of racial insecurity.  I learned how to play Ultimate Frisbee in gym class and considered joining the team during my sophomore year. I made the commitment to joining the team for the spring season as a junior and rostered as one of the only two "non-seniors" on the Varsity team.

Training for Ultimate became an outlet for all that I was enduring at the time and anytime I was stressing over a bad day at school, my mother's continued alcoholism, homework, girls. etc...  I would sit in my backyard and practice throwing frisbees at tires and an old swing to build my game as an ultimate player.  Coping with Ultimate translated to practicing every day, year-round, and Ultimate has taken me a lot further than I ever thought possible.

As a senior, I helped put in the work to develop a stronger program for BFA.  During my junior year, our team made it to the state semi-final and as the only returning Varsity player, I was determined to work hard to preserve the reputation of my upperclassmen.  In my senior year, I was named Team MVP for BFA Fairfax, named to the Vermont Youth Ultimate All-State Second Team, and started traveling around New England to play against college players and high-level, high school players from outside of the state.  I was becoming a stand-out player and some of the head coaches from rival schools, like Champlain Valley Union and Burlington, would ask me if I was enjoying my time playing for a Division Three team that lacked depth.  Our team was bad and we lost a lot of games, but that wasn't my issue with BFA Ultimate at the time.

Even with my successes and acknowledgments from the state league and my coaches, I did not have the respect of my teammates.  During my senior year, it became popular for people at school to say “What’s white is right” in jest and my teammates thought it was hilarious.  This phrase began to follow me from class, to the buses, and eventually onto the Ultimate field.  We had one practice where my teammates were really getting under my skin and I questioned if I even wanted to play for my high school team anymore.  I also had close friends and teammates from the VT High School Travel Team who played for Burlington and they would've killed for me to find a way to play for them.  Then something happened that I wasn't expecting.  My frisbee coach, Ellen Fitzgerald, noticed that I wasn't playing with the same energy that I usually played with and she came and checked on me after practice.  I told her that I was ready to just quit for the season and I could feel that she had sympathy for my continued exposure to these racist societal happenings.  Ellen asked me not to attend the next practice that we had scheduled so she could address the team and make an effort to change my experience for the rest of the season.  Ellen's decision to directly address the ultimate frisbee team on my behalf was the most overt act of support I had ever felt from anyone attached to BFA Fairfax.

Although my experience at Fairfax was challenging, to say the least, my junior year I did myself a favor and signed up for every club and sport that I could fit into my schedule.  I collected over 180 hours of community service volunteering as a Vermont High School Ambassador for two Summer Camps run by BFA Fairfax.  I spent three years as a Peer Support Counselor learning about effective communication skills, healthy living, substance prevention, and how to be a positive role model in high school culture.  I became Youth Mental Health First-Aid Certified and I learned how to run workshops about numerous topics like Active Listening, Drugs in the Brain, Diversity, Roles of the Addicted Family, etc.  I was later hired as a Youth Coordinator for a new summer program called "Franklin County Teen Institute" because of the experience and reputation I had built as a Peer Counselor for BFA Fairfax.  Franklin County Caring Communities would later name me a "2019 Prevention Champion in Franklin and Grand Isle Counties" for my work with Teen Institute.

I was a three-sport athlete between cross country, basketball, and Ultimate Frisbee for my junior and senior years.  At 17, I graduated from BFA Fairfax as a member of the National Honors Society and achieved the “BFA Challenge Award” for graduating with over 32 credits.  I received the “BFA Trustees Musical Award 2017” with a $600 check for being a member of the chorus for four years, playing in the band infrequently throughout grade school, performing at Coffee House, and doing backstage for two fall musicals.  I also received awards for leadership in the chorus.  I am grateful for the resume I was able to establish as a student of Bellows Free Academy Fairfax but that cannot excuse the toxic racial environment that has been allowed to fester throughout the years.  I was just a kid then. More times than not I felt like my oppressors were pretending to be my friends.  I was never brave enough to point them out for their actions.  What if they ganged up on me?  What if my teammates call me a snitch and suddenly everyone hates me? 

School was my escape from my home life so I just got good at moving with my head down and always doing whatever I had to do to get my work done.  In the weeks leading up to my graduation, I remember receiving a brief apology email from Principal John Tague for my treatment, explicitly linked to my race, at BFA Fairfax.  It felt nice to have some level of acknowledgment of my struggle but by then it was too late for me.  In my head, I was already over the hills and off to college.  High school was hell for me.  I would wake up at 7:30 every day and be hearing slurs by 8:05 am during my bus ride to school.  Students wearing the confederate flag openly, ( and I can only assume they don't without understanding the narrative of the Black Man in America and the meaning behind what that flag represents) and I never remember having any class discussions that turned this situations into teachable moments.  I would spend all day hustling through my classes, clubs, and extra-circulars until 2:45, attend practice after school, go to work at Steeple Market, and then walk three country miles home because I didn't have a car, just to do it all over again the next day.  In my worst moments, I looked to my grandmother for inspiration.  Knowing that she had beaten the odds of her situation and escaped the treacherous events of WW2 made my experience feel like a walk in the park.  I wanted to live the life my grandmother had dreamed for me as an academic,  When I found out I had been accepted to the University of Hartford, a Division One university, that was four hours from home, with a  BIPOC campus population of 40%,  a Frisbee team, the major I wanted, a $75,000 scholarship, and an environment where I could just blend in... I was sold.

My freshmen class motto felt like it was written for me personally.  "Your Story Starts Here"

As a freshman, I studied Psychology like my role models who ran Fairfax's Peer Support Program had before me.  I started as a Defensive Line Cutter on the University of Hartford's Ultimate Frisbee A Team and was named Rookie of the Year by my friends and teammates.  I would eventually transfer from the University of Hartford to study Community Entrepreneurship at the University of Vermont, where I've continued to travel all over the East Coast playing Ultimate.

I go back and forth about sharing the names of my former oppressors in my story because I understand my claims could potentially create a lot of backlash for individuals from my past.  Part of me would love nothing more than to finally get back at some of these ignorant young men and women for the things they have put me through because I remember every creative name I was called and every slur that’s been said in my direction. 

I will always remember that kid who called me a nigger from down an empty hallway.  

I will always remember what it felt like to be removed from the group chat because my teammates wanted to feel cool.  

I will always remember the kids on the bus who chanted nigger and labeled me “Mocha” because their Home Depot Color Chart said I was different.

My decision not to share their names was inspired by my grandmother.

 When Omi first came to America from West Germany, she had some inaccurate assumptions and stereotypes about black people.  Understanding the cultural background of the time and place where she spent her youth, her assumptions about black people were given to her by the environment she grew up in.  Omi told me earlier this summer that the first time she saw a black man in real life, she ran inside her house and locked the door because she was afraid she feared for her life that she was going to be raped and murdered.  My grandmother has always praised me for being a biracial child and loved me because of my originality and sense of independence.  When she first told me about her first experience with a black man, I was completely shocked... and then something came to me.  Today, Omi can look back and say she was an ignorant young woman and she's proven through her love and influence on my life that people can break bad habits through intentional change.  

Omi has always been a steady constant throughout my life.  When I was living with Omi in Cambridge, she always told me to always finish my plate because there are people less fortunate than we are.  During Elementary School, she would come over to babysit while my mother worked nights.  When I would do my homework, Omi taught me that I should always be grateful for the opportunities I am given because when she was little, only men were taught skills like mathematics and literature.  It wasn’t until I got to college that I was taught about the greater context in which my experiences were had.  Looking back on my time as a young student, I wish the adults who did understand the greater context of what was happening in our halls would have spoken up.  For years I heard from authority figures at BFA that the school had "zero tolerance" towards any kind of racist behavior, but they never showed me they could hold our students accountable.

We need to understand that the high school is a microcosm of the cultures that are already in the town of Fairfax, and  Ignorance is alive at BFA Fairfax.  I want my Fairfax Community to hear my story and understand that there hasn't been enough done to create a more inclusive community for the BIPOC who have made the choice to live their lives as citizens of Fairfax.  I’d like to see Fairfax implement anti-Racist workshops and seminars for staff and students ANNUALLY for the foreseeable future because these issues aren’t fixed overnight, over a year, or just between one generation.  We need to be teaching and encouraging anti-racist language at an early age and teach black history at all levels of education at BFA.  Students need to be given Martin Luther King Day off and Black History Month needs to be used to further emphasize the inclusion of black culture at BFA Fairfax.  

I wouldn’t be who I’ve become today without being exposed to this toxic and emotionally exhausting environment and I’m grateful for the life lessons I’ve learned because of it.  Together we as a community can make a positive change for the future.  We need to learn to look out for racist behaviors and create a system where BIPOC people can feel safe while letting the community know that there is a problem. This means teaching students about stereotypes and the ways people will make assumptions in modern life. This means working to create an effective and efficient way for students to report harmful behavior while feeling safe as a minority.

My hope is that no student will ever have to experience what I endured on a day-to-day basis inside those old brick walls ever again.  I’ve dedicated my life to beating the odds of my situation and there’s no reason why we can’t make things easier for the future of BIPOC students who will attend BFA Fairfax.

Closing

If I’ve learned one thing from my time at BFA Fairfax it's that silence favors the oppressor.  I've chosen to break my silence because I want to see real change.

It's one thing to just say Black Lives Matter.  It's another thing to be able to prove Black Lives Matter to your community.

Ignorance is alive at BFA Fairfax, but so I’m told Bellows Free Academy is “ committed to ensuring ALL students become informed, literate, critical thinkers who demonstrate responsible social AND civic behaviors.”

I’d like to believe this statement as well someday but I didn't believe it as a student at BFA Fairfax and I have yet to be convinced otherwise.

BFA Fairfax, you have some work to do.

Sincerely,

Moses Cheyenne Delane

Graduating Class of BFA Fairfax - 2017

UVM Community Development and Applied Economics - Community Entrepreneurship

Please explore some Omi's Artwork using the links below.  She painted under the name "MaHa".

https://youtu.be/vd27J_bBeCY

https://youtu.be/9bNCiWR4AQM