Chapters:

Chapter 1 - Race


90210/Taylor














Chapter One: Race

Race - Lesson One – Brandon. Basketball. Black People.


Five episodes into the first season of Beverly Hills, 90210, or as I like to think of it, First Junior Year, and our sum total of exposure to black people was this.

In the pilot:

1. During the pilot a black kid gave someone a high five.

2. There were two black guys walking to school in suits.

3. The voice of KWBH radio was a black guy. He had no name. And he just wanted to know whether Brandon had done the wild thing, WILD THANG, with Marianne Moore.

4. There were a couple of black kids doing a choreographed dance on the lawn before school started.

5. Mr. Clayton, the vice principal was black.

6. The bouncer at the club Brenda snuck into.

7. There was one black kid running with Brandon during what looked like gym class, who wanted to know about Brandon’s sexual conquest of Marianne Moore.

And that may seem like a lot. So many, in fact, that there were none in the next episode at all. Or the one after that. Or the one after that.

It wasn’t until One on One that anyone had a meaningful conversation with a black person. And all of those conversations were about race. Or basketball.

Here’s what happened and what I learned.

Basketball was a very big deal in the Walsh home. They had a goal hung on their garage and everything and it was set at about 8 feet off the ground. Jim and Brandon played a spirited game of horse before school.

First, Jim, despite having terrible form and no follow through on his shot at all once won a high school game against Franklin by making an eight foot set shot from the middle of the lane. Second, based on the very proud look he gave Brandon after a made jump shot, Jim was very proud of Brandon’s basketball skills and was certain that Brandon was set to crack the starting five.

But first, he’d have to make the team. Brandon and Steve both tried out for the basketball team. West Beverly, according to Steve, was a perrenial powerhouse, but the team itself was a pretty closed system. The coach had alread set his starting five and was holding the tryouts just to bolster school spirit. Steve was pretty much a lock to make the team based on his performance on the JV team the previous year. It’s also possible Steve felt very confident that he’d make the team because Steve was confident that he would always get whatever he wanted.

After watching a few minutes of black kids dunking, Brandon was less sure about his own prospects, especially since being 5’6" and slow is not seen as an advantage on the basketball court.

By the end of tryouts Brandon, and the other short white kids hadn’t even been put in the scrimmage yet and he was getting discouraged. But when he finally got his chance, he promptly got two steals from Steve, hit a jump shot, and dropped two assists to James Townsend, some new hotshot transfer student, who was coincidentally (?) black.

Brandon, because of his ability to play defense and pass the ball to the black kid, made the cut. Steve, because he’s not good at basketball, did not.

Or, according to Steve, it didn’t matter because neither one of them was going to make the team. The whole thing was rigged. None of the good basketball players live in district. But black people get into West Beverly to play basketball as part of some entitlement program called the Applied Learning Opportunity Program, and through no other means.

The ALOP brings in black students from outside of Beverly Hills, again, according to Steve, to improve diversity (how else do you think they get .54% African Americans in any ONE high school?) and the record of the basketball team.

He’s pretty pissed about this program because all black people are better than Steve at basketball and their presence prevents him from attaining his rightful place as the greatest basketball player in West Beverly Wildcat history. He tells Brandon that a lot of the ALOP kids don’t even go to class. Steve, you see, abhors the idea of anyone other than him getting preferential treatment. He also hates it when kids get grades they don’t deserve (until later when he cheats on a test, breaks into school to change his grades and steals one of Brandon’s papers).

Brandon doesn’t see it that way at all. He still thinks he has a chance to make the team because what Brandon understands that Steve doesn’t is that while all black people are better at basketball than all white people, it’s only because they are naturally more athletic. However, slow white players are better than all black players at playing defense and passing the ball to open black teammates. Which Brandon happens to excel at.

But what Steve said is starting to get to him a bit. He tries to tell Jim that all the players are recruited, the starting five is set, and the other kids are like pros. Jim knows different.

Jim, the owner of the single worst jump shot in all of christendom, tells Brandon that the real reason he made the first cut wasn’t because Brandon figured out how to succeed in the one area of basketball black people aren’t good at, it’s because Brandon read Bobby Knight’s book understands that "Winning is a state of mind," ignoring the fact that Bob Knight would have never written that in a book.

Later in the week Steve, still smarting from his being cut decides to take comfort in the fact that he’s the privileged kid of American’s favorite TV mom, Samantha Sanders of The Heartly House. He almost invited Brandon to go with him to the Lakers v. Celtics game at the Forum, using his court side season tickets. Almost, but instead he just went by himself. Steve goes on and on about how great Bird and McHale were.

"Wait a minute, I thought you were a Lakers fan," inquires Brandon.

"Except when the Celtics come to town."

"Why? Were you born in Boston?"

"No, I’m a Beverly Hills native."

"Well, what were you doing rooting for the Celtics?"

"Us Irish guys have got to stick together. You know how it is."

Brandon is perplexed by Steve’s random racism, but puts it behind him until James shows up in Tech class to ask for an extension on an assignment. Which is odd, because Brandon is in that Tech class and he’s never seen James there before. Maybe there’s something to this ALOP theory Steve has been mumbling about underneath his white hood.

He asks Andrea to look into James’ records in the ALOP for a story in the school newspaper, confidential student records being something widely available to any student who asks for them. Andrea isn’t buying it, what with Steve being a spoiled rich kid and not a terribly credible source, but she looks into it anyway.

It should be mentioned here, and then promptly ignored, that Andrea lives out of district and lies about living with her grandmother to attend WBHS and Brandon has no problem with that.

It turns out James doesn’t have a GPA, never took the reading or math placement exam, and his previous transcripts were never processed.

Brandon is uber-pissed about this. Steve is right! Black kids get to go to West Beverly without the grades to get into the ALOP, never have to go to class, and get extensions on their assignments. He confronts James who, rather than answer the wild accusations of another student who somehow got access to his confidential records in a calm and reasoned manner, accuses Brandon of being a racist. But this isn’t true at all. Brandon only assumes the worst about black people when he gets one example that seems to support the racist rantings of his best friend who has an axe to grind. If it wasn’t true about all black people why did it seem to be true about this one kid? Answer that James!!!

But then Brandon sees something he never, ever expected to see. James in a library. Why would a black kid be in the library?

Well, it turns out that James isn’t part of the ALOP, despite Andrea’s source inside the program claiming that he was. His dad works for the public library, giving James the right to go to West Beverly. Brandon is shocked by this and starts to apologize to James, who cuts him off. Yelling at Brandon, "Yeah, but you’re white! That’s why your first impulse was to think, ’Hey, he’s gotta be dumb or a rap singer, or in a gang, or smokin’ crack or whatever stereotype fits your fears, but that’s your problem. That’s not my problem!"

James’ problem, it seems, is that even though his dad works for the library he never learned that it is a quiet place where people just don’t start yelling about smoking crack. Brandon thinks about pointing this out, along with the fact that he never thought James could rap, but thinks better of it, after all this black dude seems pretty pissed. Who knows what he’ll do?

The next day he and James find themselves in the gym prior to practice. They take a few minutes to talk quietly in the one building at school where yelling is acceptable. Brandon has handled this whole thing terribly, but not because Steve is a racist, or because Brandon was looking for a reason why he wasn’t going to make the team over players who are bigger, faster, stronger, and better than he is.

No, it’s because he’s never really talked to any black people or had to deal with issues of race. James gets it. There aren’t too many cowboys in Englewood either.

"See, that’s just it." Brandon replies, suddenly sure that he’s figured this whole racism thing out and can impart some knowledge. "I’m not a cowboy and you’re not a gang banger crackhead. We’re just two guys from the same school battling for the same spot on the same team."

Did you get that? We’re the SAME!!!

Brandon learned something: We’re all the same.

And all he had to do was violate student confidentiality, accuse an innocent transfer student of breaking the rules, and get in a shouting match at a library.

Brandon even made the JV team, where there’s a larger need for short, slow kids who can pass and play defense. The other black guys on the team seemed to really like him too. Now that he wasn’t racist anymore.

Steve was still a racist though. He tried one last time to help Brandon understand the world before the end of the episode.

"Don’t let those suckers intimidate you, Brandon," he said. "This is our school, not theirs."

"Only in your mind, Steve."

It’s kind of too bad that it takes an entire basketball team of black kids to stop one white kid from being racist, but that seems to be the case.

Brandon put so much work into making the basketball team and becoming friends with those black guys. It’s odd we never saw them again or heard anything about him playing for the team.


Race - Lesson Two – Brandon Learns About Latinas


Beverly Hills had more than just a few black people to interact with and learn from. It also had a few hispanic people to interact and learn from. And this education started right away. It seems that when people move to Beverly Hills from Minnesota, they are assigned a hispanic house keeper. It’s hard to say exactly where these hispanic housekeepers come from, certainly not from West Beverly High School, as there aren’t enough hispanic students there, or presumably in any other school, but how is one to know for sure, to furnish all of these Minnesotan transplants with housekeepers. But in line with the customs, or possibly the laws, again hard to say, the Walshes got a housekeeper when they first moved in. Her name was Anna.

Aside from house cleaning chores, Anna’s primary function seemed to be to speak only Spanish with the Cindy who, in turn, would only speak English. It’s helpful, in that miscommunication based on one person being poor and hispanic and the other being white and middle class is hilarious.

By Valentine’s Day, the usefulness of Anna only being able to hilariously speak Spanish had disapated, so she learned English and gained a family: a cousin, and a neice. A neice who needed their help.

Karla, Anna’s neice, was a very bright student who was being deprived a quality education because of the gangs and violence and whatnot at her school, so Jim and Cindy were going to allow Anna to lie about her residency status, saying she lived with them, so she could attend West Beverly. This was something that needed to be explained to Brandon and Brenda by Anna’s cousin, Richard, so that the two teenagers could give their approval, for some reason.

Apparently, not telling them wasn’t an option. Even though neither of the twins had ever seen or spoken to a hispanic person at West Beverly to this point and the school was so massive it would be very easy for them to never meet Karla.

Brenda questioned this plan but while Brandon had some problems with James getting preferential treatment to attend West Bev from out of district, he either learned a valuable lesson in his interaction with James, or...

No.

Wait.

Karla is hot.

Brandon’s problem with this rule is selectively applied. When it’s a black guy he’s competing with for a basketball roster spot he gets all worked up, but when it’s a saucy Latina he gets all worked up, but...in. A. Different way.

We’re also going to ignore, once again, that one of his best friends, Andrea Zuckerman, lives out of district and lies about it to attend West Bev, and Brandon has no problem with this either.

And as it turned out, it wasn’t realistic for him to never meet Karla, because on her first day at school she walked down the hall and totally distracted Steve and Dylan on her way to accidentally walking into the Blaze Office.

Brandon tries to take Karla under his wing and warns her that West Bev is pretty competitive and that she shouldn’t let that get her down. Then she speaks French and uses words like misogynist and fiberoptics in her classes. She’s the smartest person Brandon has ever met. Karla is a genius and not whatever Brandon stereoptype fits his fears, as James put it, or whatever stereotypes you’re carrying around, as Karla puts it.

But what he should have assumed she was touchy about being hispanic. When he suggests that she’ll have no problem getting a scholarship after her performance in class she snaps on him, calling him a racist for assuming she’d get a minority scholarship. I guess Karla has a fiery temper. Are all hispanic nieces french-speaking geniuses with fiery tempers?

This type of interaction is all a part of the middle-class white kid meets someone from a different background ritual. In this case, it’s the middle-class white boy-hispanic niece variation.

An important part of the hispanic niece-middle class white boy ritual is that after roughly three hours the boy gets to start demanding explanations from the hispanic niece about what he assumes is behavior out of character, but may, in fact, be exactly the way she acts all the time. How would he know? He’s only known her since first period.

But regardless, it’s his right to know and to know right now in an angry way. Then it’s his job to turn the tables on her by revealing that he has to get to work.

"You work" she asks.

"Yeah. I work. Or doesn’t that fit whatever Beverly Hills stereotype you’re carrying around these days."

Having cleared the racial misunderstanding hurdle, he takes her to meet the other white people, and show off just how much she also loves getting free clothes out of a catalog. At the Peach Pit, Karla notices that everyone who works there not named Nat or Brandon is either a black cook or a hispanic bus boy, which makes Karla uncomfortable. There’s just something about those bus boys...

She takes Brandon to her home and it seems there are pockets of LA filled with hispanic people.

Brandon asks, "Is this part of town considered East L.A.?"

"Well, it’s not Rodeo Drive," Karla replies, returning to her defensive stance. There’s only so much Nat’s pie can do to soften you up when there are hispanic busboys staring you down.

They tag their neighborhoods, jump on and off trucks looking for work, something that Brandon has never seen before and something that actively angers Karla.

"The trucks come in the morning. That’s when it’s the worst, seeing ten of them chasing the trucks down the street. All for hard labot and very cheap pay."

"Who would just pick people up off the street?" Brandon asks, confused enough to ask, but reserved enough not to say, "poor people" or "Mexicans" or whatever steroetype was going through his mind that day.

"How do you think all those pools and swimming pools in Beverly Hills get built?"

Brandon shuts up. He suddenly understands that there might also be a socio-economic difference between him and hispanic people. This can’t be right? How did I not know about hispanic day laborers? INJUSTICE!!!

And people in Eat L.A. play soccer. In the street. He can still see the skyline, so he’s not in a parallel universe, but what is this place?!!

They pull up in front of Anna’s house and Brandon asks, with a tone of shock and dismay in his voice, "This is where Anna lives?"

"What did you expect, a delux condo?" Karla replies.

What follows is just the first of many examples of Brandon having no idea what he’s talking about, but speaking about it like he’s an expert.

"Are you this defensive with everyone, or do I just bring out the best in you?" He asks, annoyed with her and refusing to accept that, despite everything he just saw on this drive, the soccer, the graffiti, the truck, Karla may have a different experience of the world than he does.

"You and your friends have so much that you take for granted that you can’t appreciate it."

"Can’t appreciate what?"

"The language lab. The media center. The safe clean classrooms that you have."

"Well, now wait a second. Those are your classrooms now too. And with your brains you’ll be able to do whatever you want with your life."

"Yeah, I’d like to believe that too. But then I go into the Peach PIt and I see those guys looking at me like I’m a traitor for being on the wrong side of the counter."

"Whoa. Whoa. Whoa," Brandon interupts. "Who are you talking about? Manuel and Pepe?"

"I don’t know their names."

"The bus boys. Two guys with the little hats," he explains, managing to avoid saying "hispanic" or "Mexican."

"Yes."

"’Cause they’re not like that," he states emphatically, even though to our knowledge he’s never spoken to either of them in his life. "If they were looking at you it’s because you’re a pretty girl, not because you’re hispanic.

"I gotta say, and I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,"

uh-oh, this might get really racist, or sexist, hard to tell

"But, I think a lot of this is in your head. Because I don’t see it."

Karla seems to be kind of charmed by Brandon’s naivete and gets out of the car with a smile on her face. Seemingly not noticing that Brandon just called her crazy and dismissed her entire world view out of hand simply because he couldn’t see it.

Uncle Richard seems less than pleased that she brought Brandon to their home.

But despite Karla clear race-pananoia, or maybe because of it, Brandon has fallen for her.

Everyone has noticed, according to Brenda. Brandon assures her it’s platonic.

"But for how long?" asks Brenda.

"You mean if it stops being platonic, you might have a problem with it?"

Wait. What? This went from a conversation with gentle ribbing about Brandon being a poon hound to an accusation of Walsh-family racism.

"What, you think I’m hung up because she’s hispanic?"

"A lot of people get really weird when it comes to the race thing."

"Well, not me. And I’m really offended you’d even bring that up. As far as I’m concerned people are people, no matter who they are or where they come from, except maybe St. Paul." Ooh SNAP!

Eventually, after some persistence in the hallways of school and creepily following her to the bus stop in his car, he talks her into a date.

She takes him to all the hispanic parts of LA, or at least the hispanic-line-dancing parts of LA. And despite the fact that Brandon is such a terrible dancer that the entire line just gives up and returns to dancing on their own, with no coordination, there’s kissing and things seem pretty great. Except there’s a secret about Karla and it involves her overbearing uncle, who watches them kiss creepily from the front porch.

Jim and Cindy are hosting a party for his big new client, catered by Anna, who not only learned perfect English since September, but also opened her own catering company. Brandon invites Karla, but she can’t go.

She has to work.

At the party.

And at the party, Brandon gets very upset that Karla is there to serve him and his friends, despite the fact that he frequently serves his friends at the Pit. No one understands Brandon’s sudden crazy behavior, but this party is a big deal for Jim; his first big client since moving to L.A. This has to go well.

But Jim doesn’t know that Brandon is now hispanic and must speak up for his people.

Jim’s client has opened a new factory in Mexicicali "because those people work hard and they work cheap."

"How much do you pay them?" Brandon accuses.

"Why? Do you need a job?"

"No, thanks. I already have a job that pays a fair wage. I just don’t like to hear about people being exploited."

"Brandon!" Jim says, shocked to see his career going down the toilet in his own living room thanks to his son.

"I’m sorry, Dad. It just seems to me that the people who make his swimsuits oughtta get something out of it so their relatives don’t have to chase after the work trucks in East L.A.!"

Everyone is incredibly uncomfortable watching a high school kid yell at the adults about fair labor practices just because he’s made out with a hispanic girl once.

Karla doesn’t like this side of Brandon and she leaves. And goes straight to Unlce Richards car when she leaves.

Brandon, knowing that something strange is going on, and that’s why Karla was upset, not because of the crazy, possessive, now-I’m-hispanic-and-I-will-fight-for-my-people way that he’s been acting, goes to confront his Dad about it.

Jim doesn’t understand where Brandon’s crazy is coming from, and Brandon pretends he’s upset that his parents are keeping something from him instead of taking responsibility for his actions. But they can’t tell him anything, so they send him to Anna’s house to talk to Karla about everything.

But Karla’s gone. Richard wasn’t her uncle, he was a FBI agent. She was in witness protection because she witnessed a drive by and was going to snitch. But that’s all over now and she’s going back to her own high school in *gasp* Pomona, which is, if the difficulty in continuing this relationship can be any gauge, somewhere near St. Paul. Not to mention Karla’s very real fear that if she dated Brandon she’d forget all about who she was and where she came from.

He must be a great kisser.

So, what did we learn from this mess?

Well, Brandon kissed a hispanic girl and suddenly had an incredible understanding of the plight of the day laborer, something that seems to impact every single hispanic person in Los Angeles, Mexico, and probably the world.

Karla, the only hispanic person other than Anna he’s ever talked to in his life is a. Incredibly defensive about everything having to do with being hispanic, b. A snitch, c. A liar d. A pretty forceful kisser and e. Not worth trying to date after this.