Reply #94: When my stepfather beat the hell out of me for playing catch with a black kid. [View All]

I became aware of how ugly racism was when I was 13, and living in Florida. The school bus I was riding on to an all-white school had stopped at a stop sign and the white kids leaned out of the windows shouting "nigger!" at an old black man on the side of the road and spat at him. He did nothing other than turn his back to the kids while they laughed.

Being from California, and used to the casual, but not institutional or blatant, racism there I was still shocked that anyone could treat another human being with so much indignity. The most painful thing was that, even then, I realized that (at that time '50s) the old man couldn't do anything.

At that same school, my gray haired, bespectacled, "proper", teacher told the class that "we Southerners would rather die than let niggers in 'our' schools".

Those are moments I never forgot and still look upon with revulsion.