Leading by example

Fitting in was hard at first for Sikeston, Mo., native Neal Boyd. Growing up as a boy in Southeast Missouri with a black father and white mother, Boyd didn't conform neatly to traditional racial identification. He was black and white at the same time, which made the inevitable taunts from children much more harsh.

"I had to work on my sense of humor a lot to get through sometimes," said Boyd, who now lives in St. Louis. "I wasn't called some of the best names growing up, but you have to choose to handle your issue through words or walking away, and I did it through humor."

Boyd remembers an incident in which a fellow student on the playground pushed him to the ground and verbally attacked him -- all because his mother was white, while Boyd's skin was not."I asked him why he did it, and he said 'Because your mom's white,'" Boyd remembered. "And I said, Isn't everybody's?"

Boyd made others laugh so he could fit in. But if there are laughs to be had now, they're not at his expense. It took less than 10 years for the 30-year-old tenor to establish himself as one of the best singers in Missouri. The Southeast Missouri State University alumnus won the National Collegiate Artist Voice Competition in 2000, sang a solo at the memorial service for governor Mel Carnahan in 2000, performed at Carnegie Hall twice and performed at the Kennedy Center. And those are only a few of Boyd's accomplishments.

He is one of five black people the Southeast Missourian asked to discuss roadblocks they overcame and the racial dynamic in Southeast Missouri today. They're either from the Southeast Missouri area or have transplanted here. All five have one thing in common: They've made it. Whether their impact is on the wide scale of Boyd, who has rubbed elbows with U.S. senators and presidents, or more local like Michelle Gary, a black female police officer in Cape Girardeau motivated to improve her community, they have succeeded.

But it wasn't easy. They worked to get where they are, and every day they face life as a member of a minority, which comes with its own challenges.

Candace Banks

Just ask Candace Banks, a local radio personality on KZIM. Since coming to Cape Girardeau to attend Southeast Missouri State in 2001, Banks has experienced the racial divide in the city's social life and housing. "When I was in my first couple of years at SEMO, I could count on one hand the amount of white people I knew," said Banks, who's also the PA announcer for women's Redhawks basketball and a production assistant at KFVS12. "There's a divide there and in town.

"But if you're used to it, and you're 40 years old and you've been living in Cape your whole life, that's how it is."

Banks is one of few black people working in the local media, an imbalance she says affects the media's coverage of minority issues.

Michelle Gary

"If you're white, you don't know where to look for stories about what's happening in the African-American community," Banks said.

Keith Foster

Keith Foster used to be part of the small club in Southeast Missouri: black people working in the media. For 10 years he worked at KFVS12, first as a production assistant, then as a photojournalist and editor. Now he's a pharmaceutical sales rep working in the area. Like Banks, Foster is originally from St. Louis.

Foster says he was never treated differently in his media career than his white counterparts.

"I've been blessed ... I've met a lot of good people, whether they are black or white, who have assisted me on my journey."

Neal Boyd

But he still sees a lack of minority reporting in the local media.

"I think, honestly, you've got to cover negative stories when they happen," Foster said. "People have to be told the truth so they can make up their minds, but there needs to be more positive stories out there about African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, all the different ethnic groups that are here.

"There's a lot of people out there doing a lot of things, but they don't seek any positive acclaim. They're just doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, basically."

Michelle Gary

One of those positive community forces is Michelle Gary, the only black female officer in the Cape Girardeau Police Department. Gary came to Cape Girardeau to escape a life in Charleston, Mo., she was afraid was going nowhere. She grew up in a single-parent home and has made her way in life as a single mother herself, raising two children.

Boyd also grew up in a single-parent home, living in poverty.

Both Boyd and Gary share a common viewpoint: that each individual has the ability to rise above adversity and achieve in adult life.

"It's really a choice you make," Gary said. "You can decide to stay and be successful, to stay and not be successful, to leave and be successful or to leave and not be successful. You make your own choices."

Gary made her choice to become a police officer because she wanted young black people in the community to have another positive role model among what she sees as many negative role models. When she goes on patrols, Gary makes sure to stop and talk to children. She also just became an ordained minister.

Being a black police officer hasn't been easy, Gary said. She's been accused of "selling out" and struggled with her role as an officer in the beginning of her career. But those things didn't stop her. Reinforced by her strong faith and the lessons her mother taught her, Gary is trying to show young people growing up in bad circumstances that they choose their own destiny.

Boyd thinks that all too often parents in lower-class black families and societal expectations dash children's hopes for a better life. "I may have felt like I'm my mother's son, but the rest of the world saw me as black," Boyd said. "I refused to use it as a crutch because I saw so many of my friends who were black talking about having been dealt a bad hand ... and it didn't seem like it was coming from a child, it was coming from something else."

Boyd, a Republican with political aspirations, refers to President Bush's phrase "soft bigotry of lowered expectations" to explain his point.

"I understand poverty -- it's a sad situation to be in," Boyd said. "But if you're poor and you teach your children to be poor, that's where the problem comes from. It all comes back to the mentality that's placed into a child by the parents."

Alan Byrd

Poverty, says Alan Byrd, is the main challenge standing between black children and successful lives today. Byrd graduated in 1999 from Southeast Missouri State University, where he now works as the assistant director of enrollment management.

Byrd's focus is recruiting students from St. Louis. He's become familiar with the interaction between poverty and education.

Byrd also sees those factors at play in Cape Girardeau, where he says a racial and socio-economic line runs "right down the middle" of the city.

"There are a lot of variables that go into it, but a lot of it is related to income and socio-economic status," Byrd said. "The high-ability students come from the middle class and above. With African Americans, there are a disproportionate number who are from poor families. It's more about income, not race."

If students are given access to a good education, Byrd said, the problem may start to go away as more members of the disproportionately poor black population start to succeed.

But the racial divide in Southeast Missouri isn't just socio-economic, Banks said. Racist attitudes still exist: Banks said she's been the target of racial slurs in public and profiling at retail stores. Those attitudes "also work to hold down black people," she said.

"Me and my friends talk about it all the time. I won't say it's a glass ceiling, but it's just something."

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182