White Chocalate

 

Tyler Clubb is one of two white players on the Roosevelt Roughrider football roster.

Clubb has attended city schools all his life. He and his family are long time south city residents. “My dad went to Roosevelt.” Clubb said. Tyler’s father is of the last generation of white students to attend city schools before the forced bussing of the early 80’s sent white city students scampering in mass to the private city schools, or a move to the suburbs.  Clubb’s presence at Roosevelt is unique in ways beyond the color of his skin. He does not attend Roosevelt during the school day. He has been in the city schools magnet school program since entering kindergarten. He currently attends Central Visual and Performing Arts Academy High School.  Clubb’s interest is in music.

 

Magnet schools were set up as part of the 1980’s voluntary bussing program to attract and retain students, especially white students, in the city public schools. Each magnet school would be built around a special theme and enrollment, based in part on race, would be open through application to any city or white county resident. The theory was that the special and unique curriculum of the “magnets”, would attract white students from the county to voluntarily enroll in the city schools, as well as keep many white students in the city schools and out of the private schools. It was a colossal failure. While many black students took advantage of the opportunity to go to more affluent county schools, few whites – either city or county residents, enrolled in the city public school magnets.

 

Central and Visual Performing Art Academy is in the old Southwest High School building, one mile west down Arsenal Street from Roosevelt. Clubb takes advantage of unique athletic policy, approved by the Missouri State High School Activities Association, for the benefit of the city’s magnet school system.  If a student attends a magnet school that does not offer a certain sport, then that student is eligible to participate in that activity at his neighborhood school. Clubb’s family residence is in the Bevo neighborhood, just down Morgan’s Ford Road from Roosevelt High School. Because his magnet school, CVPA, does not have a football team, each day Clubb catches the activity bus outside of his school at Arsenal and Kingshighway and spends the late afternoon hours at Roosevelt with his football playing “brothers.”

 

“I have never felt different or left out because I am white,” said Clubb. “I really don’t know most of the white kids in my neighborhood. I spend most of my out of school time either working (at an area bowling alley) or with these guys at Roosevelt. Coach Campbell has made us a family.”

 

Clubb would like to dream of a college football career, although his undersize body, despite hours of strength training, would limit his options to subdivision I level programs. With outstanding ACT test scores, Clubb does not have to do the tap dance around NCAA eligibility standards that so preoccupy the worries of many of his senior Roosevelt teammates. “A lot of these guys just didn’t take school serious until the last couple of years. Now they want to play ball in college, but grades are a problem for them. I hope the younger guys are watching and have learned their lessons. You got to take care of grades from the start if you want to play on the next level,” says Clubb, sounding much like a junior Coach Campbell.

 

Sending their son to an almost all black intercity school, should not give one the impression that Clubb’s parents, Jim and Nita, are modern day liberals, the kind visible throughout the trendy areas of the city; driving hybrid cars adorned with anti-war and diversity promoting bumper stickers while wearing an Obama tee shirt. Nor should one gather that the Clubb’s are intent upon using their son’s education to make a social statement about the importance of school desegregation and racial diversity. In reality, almost the opposite is true. “I will admit,” says Jim, “our kids are in the city schools because we can not afford the private school option. Nor was I in favor of Tyler doing this (playing football) at Roosevelt. He had never played football before. His first experience with football was when he went over to Roosevelt to start practice his freshman year. He didn’t even know how to put his equipment on. I called the coach at the time and said ‘look, this is a white kid. Is this going to be a problem?’ I was very uneasy about him being the only white kid. I was afraid he was going to get hurt. I remember taking him to practice the first day of his freshman year and I drove him around to the back of the school to get to the locker room. There were all of these black kids milling around in the lot, being loud, pushing and shoving, roughhousing. But, it looked like a mob to me and I let Tyler, my son, out to walk right through the whole bunch. There was not another white kid there. I admit I was really uneasy about the whole set up.”

 

Jim decided it would be prudent for him to stay and watch that first day’s practice from the stands. “Two players get into a fight right in the middle of practice on the field. I mean a fist fight. They were really going at it and the coaches that were at Roosevelt at the time did nothing to break it up. It was almost like they wanted them to fight.”

 

Tyler’s mother, Nita, agrees that it was not an easy decision to let Tyler go to Roosevelt that freshman year. “It was his idea. We didn’t encourage him at all. We are not big “sports” people, so it was not like we were pushing him, but it was something he wanted to do, so we gave it our (reluctant) blessing.” Like many freshmen, Clubb had to go through an adjustment period. “He even quit football once,” says his mother. “Walked right off the field in the middle of practice. But the next day he went back and as the (freshman) year went on it got to be easier and easier for him. Now, football is all he wants to talk about. Football has really come to define the person Tyler sees himself as.”

 

The Clubbs are in a position to view and evaluate the city school system from a perspective most white city white residents cannot. They are candid with their observations. “There have been many things over the last 13 years about the city schools we have not liked,” says Jim. “Many times, we have not felt like Tyler has been challenged in his school work. He has had some good teachers and he has had some bad ones. We have always voiced (our opinion) when were not pleased with things.”

 

When asked if he would have send Tyler to a neighborhood school such as Roosevelt, if the magnet school option had not been available, Jim answers with no hesitation, “No. I would not feel comfortable for his safety at Roosevelt. I would not feel safe with his being one of the few white kids in the school.” But when the subject turns to football, the parental perception takes a full180% swing to the positive. Jim says, “Playing football at Roosevelt has been a great experience for Tyler. We are very proud of how hard he has worked and we are proud of his achievements. We do not miss a game.” Mrs. Clubb seconds the positive assessment of the Roughrider football program. “Tyler’s self-esteem is so tied to football. He is very proud of what he has achieved and how good the team has become. He has made very good friends with the boys on the team. They are at our house all the time. Sometimes after games, they will come over and stay until they go to school the next Monday morning. They are all such nice kids, just typical teenage boys. But I do call them “eating machines.”

 

Clubb, which Tyler likes to point out is a great name for an offensive lineman, would like to major in computers in college. He would use either his music talents or his football playing skills beyond high school if either or both would help him secure a college scholarship. But what if he had to pick between music and football? What if he had to choose between Roosevelt and CPVA? What if the rules were changed and he could not play football for Roosevelt unless he abandoned his music at CVPA and enrolled as a full-time student at Roosevelt? Clubb, showing no hesitation, responds decisively to the hypothetical questions: “I couldn’t get to Roosevelt fast enough. I wouldn’t give up the experience I have had playing football at Roosevelt for anything. It has been very good for me to see that we, as whites and blacks, are not that different. I don’t even think about being the only two white guys on the team. We all bleed Roosevelt Red. We seniors are a band of brothers.”

 

So what lessons can be gleaned from the feel good story of Tyler Clubb, the white kid known affectionately by his black Roosevelt teammates as White Chocolate? To paraphrase his parents, it would be this: The beauty and educational value of athletics lies in the premise that everyone; regardless of racial, social, or economic differences; compete on an even playing field, void of social prejudice and discrimination. For Tyler, the football field at Roosevelt High School became his own personal proving ground, allowing him to earn the respect of not only his black teammates, but more importantly, his own self-respect. The football driven self-esteem he has nurtured due to his participation at Roosevelt, Tyler will tell you, is priceless. In due time, Clubb morphed from a scared 14-year-old freshman to a self-confident 18 year old team leader. He earned the respect of his teammates - and later their friendship - not because he is white, but because he showed a grit and drive that allowed him to endure. Along the way, he also willed himself into a pretty good football player. Once Tyler was accepted as a team mate, the racial divide between his culture and that of his black team mates melted away; in essence, bridged by a camaraderie forged through endless hours of shared toil on the football field. Athletics teach youth a valuable lesson: respect is earned and lasting friendships are built, not on skin color, but as the end result of equals working together, striving toward a common goal.

 

Watching Clubb joke and banter in good natured fun with his black friends at a practice, is a stark image in contrast to a much different scenario his father witnessed that summer evening four years ago: a timid and unsure 14 year old white boy, on his way to his first football practice at Roosevelt High School, walked gingerly through what his father perceived as a “threatening mob” of young black men in the Roosevelt High School parking lot. Over the next four years, many of those same young men who comprised the perceived “threatening mob”, would become like brothers to Clubb - teammates he would now “take a bullet for.”

 

By developing a strong rapport with his African American team mates, Clubb’s experience as a Roughrider is perhaps a glimpse into the future and the utopian hope of a someday truly desegregated and color blind public school system.  But perhaps the most important lesson taught by the uplifting football experience of Tyler Clubb is the proof once more that any real change within the SLPS will be from the grass roots level, not the downtown SLPS administrative offices. St. Lois civic and educational leaders, who can never seem to find a common ground of dialogue due to the racial strife that polarizes and stifles any true growth in the St. Louis Metro area, could learn a few lessons in racial harmony and respect from Tyler Clubb and his Roosevelt Roughriders teammates.