Lessons Learned At Carrington Junior High

I first realized black and white people didn't like each other when I was eleven years old. My family moved from a military base in Hawaii, where rank mattered a lot more than color, to Durham, NC, a town caught in the racial turmoil of the late 1960s. I spent my junior high years there. I vaguely recall integrating classes. I really remember when the school system decided to integrate the buses. School ended for the day. I started up the bus steps, a girl I didn't know screamed at me, then kicked me, daring me to ride the same bus that she rode. Somehow, I made it home, on the bus, in tears. There were other bad times at school. I remember a riot one day, although in fact there may have been only one mother who actually showed up at school swinging a gun. Looking back, I don't know how mothers and fathers--black or white--sent their children into such turmoil, uncertainty and hatred. But they did it. And I am the better for it. Spending time in the same space, no matter how forced and artificial the effort, gave me the opportunity to learn to see beyond skin color to the person within. And over time, good days started to outnumber the bad. And then we moved, so I don't know how race relations at Carrington Junior High really worked out. I'm not naive enought to think racial divisions are gone, or that kids don't self-segregate, but things are so much better than they used to be. If I met her today, I doubt I would like the girl who kicked me--not because of her skin, but because she hurt me. It's the same dislike I reserve for Kelly Nelson, the white boy who bloodied my nose in fourth grade.