My job takes me into many different schools throughout the school day. Here's my lunchroom observation. In the very early years of school, children sit together in the lunch room and play with each other without regard to race. In high school, school kids very rarely casually interact. They may all claim to be friends, but blacks sit with blacks, and whites sit with whites. About the only place they do work/hang out together is on sports teams.
My son never had a black friend over to the house. And, believe me, during his teen years we have seen hundreds of kids in and out of this house and out by the pool. They all nearly ate us into bankruptcy. But... none of those kids were black. Now, he'd deny that he's racist and so would I. But I think it's interesting who his friends were, at least the friends he invited to his home.
My observation of young people and race nowadays is less overt racism (like at OU), and more of a "I just don't care" attitude.
Will the black kids in school pass? Will they go to college? Will they be successful? Will they be millionaires? Will they be homeless? Will they go to prison? The answer isn't hostility, just indifference.
I'm not sure if that's an improvement. I don't know if a liberal would view it as an improvement either. I can say that I don't think social engineering has worked like anyone predicted.
We have so few black kids that there is no division. Black kids and white kids hang out all the time. Interracial dating is just a given. Besides, most of them have at least one white parent.
Having grown up in a city, it was quite a culture change for me.
I agree with you. My son has just started high school. He went to a small private grammar school and his best friends were all Asians. They came over to our home all the time. Now he is in high school and his circle of friends is expanding and they are more and more white and hispanic. We are hispanic ourselves. I don’t think it’s racism at all, I think it is more a modern form of tribalism. People cluster with those they feel most comfortable with..and often that comfort level begins with appearances.