When I was growing up in the 60s, I was one of the victims of bussing, a federal program that took blacks from bad neighborhoods and bussed them into good white schools in the hopes that they would benefit from it. Like all liberal policies it was a disaster. Many of the white kids, including myself, were okay with this. At first. It wasn't long before the white schools, which had been some of the best in the country, became some of the worst. Many of the black kids had slipped back one or two years and were considerably larger and more dangerous in an environment that was run, in their eyes, more like a prison than an institution of learning. Drugs began to be circulated amongst the white students and teachers were beat up in the parking lots and some humiliated by black students in class. It wasn't safe for white students (and some blacks) to go to the restrooms alone.
And it wasn't safe for female teachers to be alone in classrooms after school. One teacher, a frail and skittish fellow, had no defense from large, aggressive blacks and was frequently assaulted by them. They found him one morning in his classroom closet, hanged with his own tie. It most likely was suicide.
I had plenty of problems myself and tried to keep on the good side of these monsters and actually brought spare change to school with me, as I had learned it was better to have it and give it than to not have it. One day a goon with a head shaped like a Neanderthal came in late to an English class. Seeing there was no chair at his table, he decided to take mine and merely remove it out from under me. And the female teacher, a young waif, did nothing. I should have just left the room, but at the time I was pissed. And I immediately set out to retrieve my chair. The offending student simply turned and punched me in the chest and sent me flying onto a nearby table and scattering books. The teacher did nothing though I had the breath knocked out of me. To this day I have a lump on my chest from where he hit me. After that I began carrying makeshift weapons to school with me.
As the drug problem increased, we had at least one narcotics agent posing as a student. It led to a very large drug bust, but only served to further divide blacks and whites. One day a white student had a bad break up with his girlfriend and he was very wrought over it. As he was leaving school a largely harmless black student hit him up for some change. A disagreement ensued and Phillip, the black student, a guy I'd always gotten along with, pulled out a banana knife. In the struggle, the white student took the knife from Phillip and stuck it in his thigh narrowly missing an artery. Phillip managed to make his way to the clinic leaving a substantial blood trail.
The racial tensions nearly broke the school following the drug bust, and at one point the blacks had largely gathered on one side of the school and the whites on the other, and in between were riot cops all decked out with vests, helmets and weapons. The Black Panthers also showed up to agitate where they could. After about three horrible days of unrest, the white student who'd stabbed Phillip committed suicide in his own home using his dad's shotgun. Then the tide turned and now whites were seeking revenge by assaulting blacks.
It was years before I could see black in a positive light. I despised them as a race, I carried weapons when I went into black neighborhoods and though I never raised a fist or club against them, I was always prepared. Later, I met some great black people, made them my friends and changed my views, but it took years. In Washington, D.C., I faced down five very large black youths, and it was only because I had an illegal .38Spc revolver on me that my date and I were able to get away. I only had five shots, but my gun was loaded with a lethal specialty ammunition that alone would have sent me to prison. So I'm glad they backed off. I don't carry in D.C. anymore, but I don't park in underground garages anymore at night, either, and the only reason I did so then was because we were attending a play at Arena Stage and we visited one of the actors afterwards. After we left, the place looked like a war zone. Everything was locked up with steel bars. And looking back I'm glad I was armed, but had it not been for the (largely one-way) violence I saw in school during those turbulent times, I most likely never would have become a knife and gun hobbyist as I am now. It definitely affected me for most of my life.
It also made me a conservative.
