The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Yeah. I won't pretend like we all got along. I learned some ugly ideas in those days that took me quite a while to unlearn.

I believe we benefit from interacting with humans from different perspectives. The resultant mishmash, though, just ended up with kids enduring long bus rides to end up in an unfamiliar place. Likewise, parents struggled to support the school missions since they were also removed from the physical location. While racism certainly did and does exist in all its pernicious forms, the complaints were largely logistical.

You're not wrong, but the bolded part doesn't supersede a child's need to primarily be shaped by their parents and a parent's need to be close to their child to control the environment to a great extent.  Getting exposure to other ideas and perspectives is great....when you go off to college, or matriculate through life.  It's BS when the main goal at the time is to learn addition, subtraction, and writing.  Elementary school children shouldn't be sent across town.

Busing changed all that in the name of forced integration.  I was 9 years old getting bused to an elementary school that was 6 miles away, a 40 minute busride each way, and kids from that neighborhood were getting bused into my neighborhood.  It got worse for junior high, I was bused all the way across town, 11 miles, and kids from that neighborhood were bused all the way to mine.  45 minutes to an hour roundtrip in traffic, each way.  

Now that I think about it, I had two elementary schools.  The one I remembered earlier, for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, which I lived less than an air-mile from and so walked, or rode my bike.  But for 1st and 2nd grade I was bussed to another school somewhat further away.  I recall it was a tad bit traumatic at the time.  Some of my school friends made it to the new elementary school with me, so that was nice.  But a lot of them didn't, and that sucked.  A few of those we picked back up in 6th grade when we wound up at the same middle school.  But we lost others from the later elementary school.  Sheesh....the more I remember about that, the more I remember how it sucked to lose touch with kids.  No facebook or personal phones back then.  

I can say, as opposed to your ordeal, I don't know that our bus rides were 45 minutes in elementary school.  They for sure were when we got sent to downtown BR in middle school, though.  

Now, in 9th grade when I was in Georgia, that bus ride was well over an hour, but that mainly had to do with the fact we lived in a very rural area, the nearest school was probably 20 mins away in a straight shot, so by the time you add in the bus meandering around the county to pick up all the other rural kids, the ride was long as hell.  

But yeah....back to Baton Rouge....I didn't think about it at the time, I just kinda accepted it, but my two best friends from the neighborhood lived right by me.  One next door, and one across the street from me.  All three of us went to different elementary and middle schools.  And we were two white kids and a black kid, so.....I mean, take the three of us together and you got some diversity, you'd think.  But.....no.  

IF the interactions had been natural, rather than forced, I don't think there would have been that much tension.  And there were no issues when the minorities were bused into the white neighborhoods.

The main issue was, they viewed us as a bunch of rich white kids, and we were herded onto "their turf."  They hated us for both of those things.

I mean, I can assure you I wasn't rich.  My folks were each working two jobs and I wore hand-me-down Sears Toughskins jeans and Kinney shoes. 

But it didn't matter.  They assumed I had white privilege and wanted to take me down for it.  Same for every other white kid at that school.

Suckiest thing that ever happened to me, which made me rethink my life and why I was spending 45 minutes on a bus to a middle school downtown in a terrible part of town....

Our bus broke down right in the hood one day, and while the bus driver went into the nearest house to use their phone to call the school district, a bunch of local hoodrat kids (literally, they were no older than us) climbed up the outside of bus and started macing us all through the windows.  

We had the windows open because it was hot as hell with the bus broke down, just sitting there.  We closed the windows fast as we could, but it was too late.  Probably wasn't a racial thing because we had blacks and whites on our bus.  It was just a crap neighborhood in a crap part of town with kids who weren't raised any better than to think it's hilarious to mace other kids stuck on a bus.  

Fire Department eventually came and hosed us down to help get the residue off of us.  Only time I've ever been maced.  Never wanted none of that again, lemme tell you.

All told, I got home about an hour and a half late that day, whereupon my mom was freaking out because my sister had already called her at work that I wasn't home, and then nobody believed my story.  It did make the paper the next day, though, which was weird because I don't think any reporters showed up to the scene or anything.  

Life was different then.  Can you imagine bus drivers with no cell phones or CB radios?  It's hard to even imagine kids today without cell phones.  

Austin undoubtedly has a classier form of hooliganism than does Baton Rouge.  

Yeah our slummiest neighborhoods were never all that scary, that's for sure.

Unless of course a yellow schoolbus dropped you into the middle of one with like 4 or 5 other white kids amongst hundreds of angsty angry Mexican kids and no escape routes, like the drop-in for HALO or Fortnight or some other video game where you are plopped straight into an active combat hellzone with completely inadequate firepower and you're hopelessly outmanned and overmatched.

And you're 12 years old and the only adults nearby actively blame you for being there and you're a racist if you make any attempt at objecting or calling attention to your bleeding face.

Then they get pretty freakin' scary.