Being Black In Federal Way -- From Shampoo To Books, Some Not Comfortable In Growing Community

South King County used to have as much ethnic flavor as mayonnaise. But that changed in the 1980s, according to the U.S. Census. Although 94 percent of residents were white in 1980, that figure dropped to 88 percent by 1990.

Federal Way reflects those changes. Whites made up 93 percent of the population in the area in 1980, but only 87 percent a decade later. The number of African Americans nearly quadrupled, from 723 to 2,709, representing the biggest percentage increase among people of color.

But talk to African Americans and you'll find the numbers have changed more than the conditions. They are glad of the positives Federal Way has to offer: clean, safe neighborhoods. They're glad that Federal Way has adapted somewhat. And they have begun feeling less isolated, finding each other in malls and supermarkets and starting small educational, social and even political groups.

But in many ways, African Americans in Federal Way say they still are treated like outsiders.

Being African American in Federal Way means having a hard time finding cosmetics because supermarket shelves are lined with lotions and shampoos for white people.

If you have kids, as Regena Tibbs or the Rev. Michael Hale do, it means thinking opportunities for your children are sometimes limited by the color of their skin. For instance, it means watching schools put on plays that have no leading roles for African Americans.

Being an African American in Federal Way, even in 1993, also means going to City Council meetings and usually being the only African American in the room.

It sometimes means being watched with a suspicious eye as you browse through stores.

It means feeling like you're not really a part of your community.

It is true the 1980s, in which the city's African-American population almost quadrupled, also brought some progress. One sign came last year when a Weyerhaeuser administrator, African American Effenus Henderson, was appointed to the Federal Way School Board. He became the first person of color to hold public office in the area.

But, for the most part, Federal Way remains a city where even shopping is a vastly different experience, depending on if you are white or black.

New hassles

Rubi Williams, for instance, doesn't look like the type who'd pass a bad check. She's a well-spoken, well-dressed real estate agent. Williams said she never had any hassles writing checks when she went shopping in Federal Way with her husband, who is white. But she said things have changed now that she's divorced and goes to the same stores alone.

Now, when she tries to write a check, "they want to see your driver's license, your credit cards - the whole nine yards," Williams said.

Subtle racism

Hale said the same things happen to him. When he goes into a store just to browse, he says store employees seem overly concerned with what he's doing. They keep an eye on him, and ask repeatedly if they can help.

The problem, he said, is that few of the businesses in Federal Way are run by people of color or employ people of color. That leads to a subtle racism, he said.

It's the same kind of insensitivity, according to African Americans, that leads businesses to neglect them when they stock their shelves.

Because blacks and whites have different hair and skin textures, African Americans use different products. But when they can find those products, the selection is extremely limited.

"They're all the way in the back of the Drug Emporium on three little shelves," said Regena Tibbs, who lives with her family in Federal Way and works as a state auditor.

For a white person, it would be like going to the store and finding only one brand of hair-care product - "Afrosheen," she said.

Businesses, though, said there's not enough demand to warrant carrying a larger selection, or they didn't realize there were differences in the kinds of products whites and African Americans use.

As a result, African Americans say they shop in Seattle and Tacoma for a better selection.

There are other inconveniences. Bookstores do not carry many books written by African Americans. Supermarkets might order ethnic foods if you ask in advance. But you cannot just run to the store to pick up okra, turnip greens or other ethnic foods if the mood strikes you.

For a group of African Americans who were gathered around

Hale's dining-room table one afternoon after Bible class, the bias they believe their children face was the most hurtful.

That there are few activities for the city's teenagers is a problem confronting families of all races and ethnicities, but for African American parents, there's also the feeling that opportunities for their children are sometimes limited by the color of their skin, despite the content of their character.

"It seems like all they have for our kids is sports," said Tibbs, who is raising a 15-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter with her husband Tobina, a postal supervisor.

"I want my kids to be more well-rounded. There's nothing to stimulate their minds. It's all just physical," said Regena Tibbs.

Whites get lead roles

It's true that activities like bands and clubs do not exclude people of color, but Tibbs says she notices white children always play the lead roles in plays. She thinks this is largely because the plays call for white characters.

Last year, the Hales, Tibbs and other parents tried to organize a variety of cultural classes in which children and adults of all races could take part. They would have taught theater, using plays like "Raisin in the Sun," and would have taught African dance.

But the group said the effort failed largely because they did not get much help from the schools. Goldia Brinson, who was involved in the project, said the schools did not widely distribute fliers advertising the program, and it took months for the group to get permission to use school space.

By the time it did, summer came and the parents couldn't afford to pay for janitors to clean up. They tried running the program out of their homes but that got to be too much of a burden, so they abandoned the effort.

The Hales said parents also worry their children are losing a sense of their history and culture as they grow up in a predominantly white community. They understood the tradeoff when they moved here, but felt the city's nice neighborhoods and good schools were worth it.

Reinforces self-esteem

But especially for parents like Hale, who hail from much more culturally diverse areas of the country, it seems a shame the children will not have the same chance to grow up among other African Americans. Hale, from Washington, D.C., thinks having friends of your culture - talking the slang, discussing the issues - reinforces your self-esteem as an African American.

Parents said they try to make up for the lack of other African-American children by instilling cultural pride in their kids. But they said the city's institutions do not give them enough help.

Tibbs, for instance, said when her son was assigned to do a book report, she thought it was a good way to get him to read books by African-American authors.

So she took him to the King County library in Federal Way to get "Native Son" and "Black Boy." The books were written by Richard Wright, and delve into experiences of being a young African-American man.

They couldn't find a copy of either book in Federal Way. At the South 320th Street library, the only copy of "Native Son," the first best-selling book by an African American author, was lost. The only copy at the First Avenue South library had been checked out. Neither library carried Wright's autobiography, "Black Boy."

She eventually got the books after they were ordered from Kent's public library. But to Tibbs, it was an example of the segregation of cultures in Federal Way.

If the most renowned literature by African-American authors is so inaccessible, she wonders how people of other cultures will learn about hers.

A white City Hall

Walk into City Hall and you will probably see only one African American - a receptionist in the community development office.

Walk into the City Council chambers and you will face a City Council that is all white. Perhaps well-intentioned. Perhaps sensitive. But all white.

At several rows of tables next to the council's stage sit the city's key officials - the city manager, the assistant city managers, the heads of departments. All of them are white, too.

A study done two years ago by a consultant on human-services needs found that because virtually every person working in City Hall is white, minorities feel estranged from city government.

Since then, the city has hired some minorities, which has brought the percentage of minorities who work for the city to 10 percent, said Assistant City Manager Steve Anderson.

But he acknowledged the city, incorporated in 1989, needs to do a better job hiring minorities - until at least 14 percent of city workers are people of color and reflect the rest of the city.

Until then, "you go to City Hall and you see that everybody is white and you get discouraged," said Grover Jackson, who served for a time on a committee trying to build a park at Steel Lake.

At times, things happen to reinforce the feeling that you're not really welcome.

Jackson recalled walking around City Hall while he waited for a city official to get out of a meeting. He said a secretary saw him walk by the door, came out of the room to the hall and asked him what he was doing. "She looked really nervous," he said.

But Jackson hopes attitudes will change over time. He sees Federal Way as being young enough to not have the ingrained race problems other cities have.

"They have the perfect opportunity to get it right," he said. "If they get everybody involved, then maybe other cities will take a hint. Federal Way can become a shining example, a jewel in the crown, and everybody will say, `Look at little Federal Way. Look at what they're doing down there.' "

The city has responded, in large part to the alienation minorities feel, by creating a a diversity committee, made up of nine people of color including four African Americans, to make recommendations to the City Council on minority issues.

It was the idea of Mayor Robert Stead, who said he thinks people of color were feeling "shut out because they are in the minority. It's important for government to reach out so they feel more comfortable."

The alienation partly explains why Henderson became the first African American in the city to hold public office only last year, even though their numbers have been growing steadily for more than a decade, Stead said.

Henderson gave another reason: Living in a bedroom community like Federal Way makes it difficult to forge political alliances and gain a sense that there's enough people who feel the same way about things to back your campaign.

In a city, people meet on the stoop, at the market, at the community center. But African Americans in Federal Way say, for a long time, they have had a sense of isolation and resignation.

That has begun to change, however, and more African Americans have begun getting involved in city politics. Last year, for instance, a group called the Federal Way African American Coalition formed out of concern for the city's lack of resources for their children, said coalition President Diane Turner.

The group realized that such programs like those helping African-American kids overcome cultural bias on Scholastic Aptitude Tests do not exist in Federal Way.

Turner said she thinks the reason the city and businesses has lagged behind in providing the services African Americans need is not hatred but ignorance. She said the ignorance is understandable.

"How is a white person who owns a store supposed to know that we need certain things for our hair?" said Turner, whose family has lived in the city since 1982. "How is the library supposed to know about all the books we might want unless we tell them?"

In order to make them understand, the group has been trying to forge ties with the school district, city government, libraries and businesses. That has meant that in unprecedented numbers, albeit only 11, African Americans have joined various school district and city committees in the last couple of years.

Schools slow to change

While Henderson's appointment augers more changes for the school district, thus far there has been a slow learning curve in adapting to a diversifying student body.

Like the city, the 19,000-student school district also saw a tripling in the number of African Americans in the 1980s. In 1980, only 1.9 percent of students were African Americans. In 1990, that figure had risen to 6.8 percent.

In response, the district has been working on making its curriculum more inclusive of different cultures. And it has been trying to hire more minorities as teachers, administrators and office workers, said district spokeswoman Judy Wall.

The most significant change in the curriculum has been to offer global-studies classes at Decatur High School, where music and literature from around the world are incorporated into social studies.

Otherwise, the most visible change probably has been to run more cultural fairs in the schools. While a positive step, it is also a reminder of something Stead said in a different context.

The City Council had tried last year to reach out to the city's Korean community by going to dinner and holding a meeting at one of the city's Korean churches.

Later, Stead said he talked to a Korean-American man who was upset. "He said something to the effect that he hates it when people eat a Korean meal and think they understand the culture."

School officials acknowledge that more meaningful changes are needed.

The district is working on a new curriculum that would incorporate different cultures into more of the subjects taught at school. For instance, a lesson on families might bring in how families are structured in different cultures around the world, said Lynn Erickson, district curriculum director.

But Erickson said the new curriculum probably won't begin being phased in until the fall of 1995.

Wall said the effort to hire more minorities also has been slow because of the intense competition between school districts to hire more minorities. Between 1989 and the fall of 1992, the district hired 100 people of color as basic teachers. But the percentage of people of color in those jobs rose only from 7 percent to 7.1 percent.

Over that time, the district hired 139 people of color into certified positions, which include teachers, nurses, administrators and counselors. That raised the percent of people of color holding those jobs from 7 percent to 7.4 percent.

To Henderson, the effort is encouraging. He thinks the district is headed in the right direction and it always takes some time for the community to adapt when their area gets more diverse.

No regrets

None of this is to say that African Americans regret living in Federal Way. They came to the area for the same reasons that attracted 30,000 other people in the 1980s: good schools, quiet neighborhoods, low crime rate.

Hale said his family left Washington, D.C., despite its strong African-American community, because the city had just become too dangerous. "I'm a worrier," he said. "I work a lot of late hours (at Boeing) and I like knowing my family is safe."

Jane Hale said she has been touched by the kindness of the neighbors in their Ozzie and Harriet subdivision, all of whom are white.

She recalled one time when she couldn't start her car on her way to a doctor's appointment. A neighbor, who is white, took the battery out of his car and put it in hers, she said.

In living rooms and around dining room tables in the city, African Americans also have sought support from each other, banding together in small social groups, Bible study meetings and political groups.

Lillie Aziz, who is from Boston and serves on school district committees, has adapted by starting an African-American history group, which meets Sunday afternoons in her home.

Adults and children gather, she said, to talk about contributions made by African Americans throughout history, lessons that are not always taught in school.

But she cannot find the literature they discuss at the meetings in Federal Way. For that, she and her husband have to comb the bookstores in Tacoma and Seattle.

-----------------------------------------------------. Growth in Federal Way and South King County. . The 1980s brought more people of color, according to the U.S. Census: . SOUTH KING COUNTY. .

% of total. . Year % increase Population population. . 1980 406,874 100%. . 1990 (+29.1%) 525,226 100%. . White population: . 1980 380,375 93.5%.

. 1990 (+21.9%) 463,816 88.3%. . Asian and Pacific Islander population: . 1980 11,043 2.7%. . 1990 (+171.4%) 29,975 5.7%. . African-American population: . 1980 5,753 1.4%. . 1990 (+215.7%) 18,164 3.5%. . Hispanic population (may be of any race): . 1980 8,172 2%. . 1990 (+95.3%) 15,956 3%. . Native-American population: . 1980 4,416 1.1%. . 1990 (+65.3%) 7,299 1.4%. . Other population: . 1980 5,287 1.3%. . 1990 (+13%) 5,972 1.1%. . FEDERAL WAY. Total population. . 1980 45,468 100%. . 1990 (+58.6%) 67,554 100%. . White population: . 1980 42,198 92.8%. . 1990 (+38.7%) 58,535 86.6%. . Asian and Pacific Islander population: . 1980 1,545 3.4%. . 1990 (+215.7%) 4,877 7.2%. . African-American population: . 1980 723 1.6%. . 1990 (+274.7%) 2,709 4.0%. . Hispanic population (may be of any race): . 1980 869 1.9%. . 1990 (+154.2%) 2,209 3.3%. . Other population: . 1980 655 1.4%. . 1990 (+25.8%) 824 1.2%. . Native-American population: . 1980 336 0.7%. . 1990 (+71.1%) 575 0.9%.