All of this recent white vs. black crap made me start to think back to my personal experiences.

    The summer between my 5th and 6th grade, my mom, step-dad, and I moved to North Las Vegas. We lived in a mobile home park…or a trailer park-if you’re a dick. Yes, like Eminem, so does that give me street cred.? Well, 5th grade went pretty smoothly, other than being the new kid. I mean, I realized that there were more Mexican and black kids than white, but at that age, it wasn’t an issue. It’s was a strange school arrangement as it was only 4th and 5th grades, the kindergarten through 3rd grade school was across the street.

    Middle school was a little different! It was 6th through 8th grade, with a larger district drawing all sorts of new kids I didn’t know. My best friend was my cousin, who had gone to a different elementary school. We hung out and did our thing. We sat at the white table at lunch, mostly the only kids that would talk to us were white-and one Italian kid, I remember. There was some sort of invisible peer pressure to fuck with the white kids, or just ignore them. I remember one little thug had a gold necklace that read, “Good in Bed”. I’m not father of the year, but I can’t imagine thinking it was acceptable for your kid under 15 to wear that. Although, I’m not sure that his parents even knew-maybe he only wore it at school?

    The one incident that always comes to mind was that these 3 black kids cornered me in the hall between classes, and were fucking with me because I had off brand shoes. That actually made me a huge target. Looking back, I know that their parents couldn’t have been much better off financially than mine were, but the ones that picked on me for that definitely dressed better! But, I digress…
Here I am cornered in the hall, and this kid named Kenneth (big high top haircut) from my 5th grade class comes through the doors in the crowd and happens to make eye contact with me. He keeps walking with the crowd, then after a few seconds, he wedges himself between them and me, and says, “just leave him alone, guys.” They look at him a second, and then just turn around and walk off. I thanked him and we went on about our separate ways.

    I remember seeing him the rest of that school year, and I was always thankful, yet neither one of us dared speak to one another for fear of being outcast from our respective groups. How sad is that? I don’t know exactly what caused the sudden transition in how we all (white and black especially) treated each other between 5th and 6th grade. It’s very strange. We were suddenly thrust into this larger pool of kids, and followed what the “big kids” there were doing. I’m glad little Kenneth had some balls, who knows if those kids would have kept fucking with me. If I knew where he was, I’d buy him a beer.

Middle and high schools are a bitch.
If you are a bit off the mark you will get picked on.

Absolutely. However, I recall the feeling that us kids that had come into that large of school we only doing 'racist' shit due to peer pressure. The older kids said "honky", so the younger kids followed suit. I know my parents never sat me down one day and told me to not like black kids, and I really doubt their parents did either. By the way, if you are called honky, don't say, "Honk! Honk!" like a horn!

I'm hitting the sauce the day before Thanksgiving, and only one Arfcommer has anything to say? What the hell guys?

I'll say my school was way boring and 95 percent white. I don't know how school kids now-a-days can make it in some areas. Cheers.