I started high school the first year of integration (1968). The black kids really resented having to come to our school (of the four white/hispanic high schools, all the blacks came to mine). Before that, the black kids loved their schools, and nearly all graduated. There was very little illigitimacy.
Saw my first riot that year. The liberals own this. If they had left well enough alone, no busing, the racial divide would have healed itself.
Heeling itself leaves no room for liberals to feel self-righteous.
The liberals own this. If they had left well enough alone, no busing, the racial divide would have healed itself.
I have a similar history to yours. I was in the Milwaukee public schools when busing started in 1978. We went from 64 blacks in a school of 2200 kids to 300 blacks.
Prior to busing we had no racial problems at all. Why? Because the black kids that were there were just like us. They (and their families) were already integrated into our school and our community.
Then they started busing and dropped 250 foreigners into our community. These kids were not us. They came from a totally different culture and they were on edge against us as we were on edge against them. We ended up with racial fights almost every day. There were "safe" restrooms for whites and places where you just didn't go unless you were in a large group. Our black kids didn't even like the newcomers.
Integration is not a racial thing. It's a cultural thing. And America in the late 50's was slowly integrating as the cultures of the blacks and the whites were becomming very much the same. My father's generation was more racist than my generation, and my children's generation would have been less racist than my generation.
Then busing happened and we were exposed to the bad part of black culture.
But there was still hope. Blacks were still integrating into white society and racial barriers were still falling. (and the greatest barrier is white perception of blacks as being "other" than us).
In my fraternity we had a handful of black brothers. They weren't thought of as "black" they were thought of as brothers. Just the same as the rest of us. It was in stark contrast to the residents of the neighborhood the house was in. Those people were blacks, they were not us as the culture was that different. And then obama happened and we saw that black inner city culture was against us and practiced violence towards us.
And now we are even more racist than our fathers were. (And our children will be even more racist. They recognize that they cannot trust people who attack them for merely being white)
I live in a small town. We have a small black community. But they are us. They are not "black" culturally so the color of their skin is no big deal. I have no problem at all with any black in my community. They're great people.
But I do not go into the big cities anymore. Those places are foreign war zones controlled by enemies. That culture is against me.
Integration will happen when the blacks once again become us. People want to live and be with people who are just like themselves. We self-segregate into cultural groups. Always have, always will. Until the blacks surrender their inner city culture and start acting like Americans they will be shunned into the ghettos. Integration will only happen when the blacks want to integrate. Because as long as they insist on practicing their inner city "culture" Whites will continue to flee from them.
(sorry for the rant)