I went to an all black school in elementary. We had to literally cross the tracks to get there from my neighborhood, the area was small and dirty, but there was no inherent racism amongst the children. The middle school I attended was pretty rough, but much cleaner. Some of the children would spout off shit they heard their parents or elders say, but the atmosphere wasn’t one of racial division and hate. Once I got to high school, however, the clicks of black students began to segregate themselves from all things white. They didn’t know why, but went along with the group mentality. This totally shaped their attitudes to disregard and disrespect anyone who was doing well in school in an attempt to cover for their own mental weaknesses. As soon as they realized they couldn’t compete in the classroom, they turned into an angry mob of isolationists that blamed all others for their inadequacies.

The braking point came when we had a mural painted up high on the wall of the entry to the school. There were people of all races and genders, but the baseball player was represented as a black person when not a single black man was on the team. When the team asked to have the player re-painted as a white boy, every black person in the school suddenly became part of a hive mind that displayed animosity for any white person. The air was thick with the underlying hatred they were suddenly directing to all non black students. Since white guilt hadn’t become a thing yet, we got a ladder and some paint and made the baseball player white. This was the final straw and our school of 3000 kids was forever divided by race.