Word: jonathans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Jonathan's mom Robin Norice, 38, an IRS tax examiner, has had her son in the program since the fourth grade because, she says, "I want him to have the same educational experience as whites"--one of higher quality than he would get in the inner city. Jonathan's neighborhood friends often taunt him for being too good to simply walk the six blocks to Roosevelt High. But "all they do there is fight every day," he says. "You've got to worry about the gangs and what color you're wearing." He appreciates Webster's relative safety...
Look in on the high school, and you'll see a real-life Benetton ad in which whites and blacks joke and gossip easily between classes, study together in the library and date one another. Jonathan counts among his best friends three white guys in his choir class. "Blacks and whites mix in real well together here," he says. Sally Roth, a white senior, agrees. "Race doesn't really matter here," she says. "I've dated black guys, and so have just about all my friends...
...this morning, as Jonathan boards the bus, his hands dangle, free of books or homework. He says he completed his assignments at school the day before, a story that frustrates his mother, given his 2.0 grade-point average. "I always tell him, 'You've already got two strikes against you: you're black, and you're male. The only thing that's going to get you where you want to go in life is an education...
...Jonathan is a slacker; at home he cleans, cooks and takes care of his three younger siblings when his mom and stepdad are working. During Jonathan's freshman and sophomore years, Norice says, "he was playing football and basketball, was in show choir and concert choir, rehearsing for a play and working part time stripping furniture. He was overwhelmed. The commute was wearing him down. But he's cut his schedule down, and is really doing better...
...Jonathan is known as a good cook and wants one day to be a chef. But he doesn't see much connection between that dream and his schoolwork. And he often seems distracted by fights with his dad, venting to his friend Kristina Betts during the bus ride that "I'm too old for him to try to chastise...