Desegregation

St. Louis began it's desegregation program when I started the 6th grade. The year was 1981. The city quickly created magnet schools to try and get more volunteer students, and to keep the courts from creating a plan of integration. The kids in my neighborhood attended either Notre Dame Catholic School, or the nearest public school. I didn't know anyone who went to Holy Cross Lutheran School, although that was also an option.

The public school kids walked to school, attended classes with their neighbors, and generally behaved like normal kids. And then the busses came, bringing problems that no one was prepared for. It never occurred to the school board that the deseg students might resent being pulled from their neighborhood schools. They didn't really have a choice. The "black" schools were closed, and the students had to go somewhere. That "somewhere" was predominantly white schools filled with children who had known each other their entire lives. The black students were divided between many schools, meaning they were separated from their friends. They probably felt isolated, and I know they were scared. Some of the new students were agressive; determined not to be pushed around or put down by "whitey". The white students were told fearful stories about how savage "black people" were; how they were all criminals or animals.
None of this was true, of course; but it made for a very bad start.

When I left Notre Dame for a magnet school, I was warned about "black" behaviour. I was told that the girls would steal anything they wanted from me. I was warned not to carry a purse, because the girls would come up to me and say, "What you got girl gimmie some." While taking whatever I had. I was told that "they" would beat me up if I resisted...
Mind you, my neighborhood was filled with some of the meanest, toughest kids I'd ever seen. The kinds of kids who would knock you down and kick your teeth in. Kids who thought that a fight wasn't a fight unless you came away with blood and a trophy. Yet they were afraid to fight the black kids.

Children are good at sensing fear, and when these new students saw the fear in the old students, they took advantage of it. It's what children do across the world.
It took a few years for the neighborhood kids to remember that they were tough. Then they started fighting back. The schools became dangerous. Students of both races started cutting school because the streets were a safer place to be. They also found ways to be safe within the schools. One way was to sell drugs. The drug dealers were cool, and you don't mess with the cool kids. That's how we got 7th and 8th graders selling pot or speed to 5th graders. Smoking was also cool. Smoking meant you were a badass, and therefore less likely to be a victim. The really badass kids would talk back to the teachers, walk out of class, and throw things out the window. Nobody messed with those kids.

Desegregation, at least St. Louis' version of it, created a lot of problems. We still don't have any solutions.