[defenderfors]

I started school in the 70's, in the south, when the forced busing era began. Being (off) white, that meant I rode a bus for an hour, to a school in the ghetto, and went to school with a bunch of black kids from the projects. I was allowed to attend kindergarten in my neighborhood, but rode the bus in first grade.

In first grade, I was the only white boy in my class. I had long sandy blonde hair and was very much white in appearance. According to my mom, the teachers were puzzled about my behavior. Out on the playground, I wasn't playing with the other kids like they thought I should. Instead I would run around and flail my arms. The other kids gave me a nickname: wild boy

From my memory, I actually got along with with most of the kids in class. I remember there was this one short boy who tried to act tough, like a Napoleon complex or something. He figured out, though, that if he tried to pick on me when the teachers weren't looking, I'd defend myself. If the teachers were watching, I wouldn't, because getting in trouble at school meant my mom would whip my ass, which was worse than anything he had to offer. So he got clever. We were lined up in the hallway one time... the teacher was looking the other way, or so he thought. He came up and hit me from behind. I wanted to hit him back but looked at the teacher and she was watching. She looked at me, and said "hit him". I didn't hit him immediately, because I was confused. Then she said "he hit you, so hit him back!" So I hit him.

We moved for second grade, and I was in a school where it was fairly integrated, which was alright. We lived in some crappy apartments and later moved a mile or so away, into a trailer park. That neighborhood wasn't good then, and is totally jacked up now. There's actually a gangster rapper named after that neighborhood, LOL.

Third grade, I was living with my grandparents, and they sent me to a Christian private school, all white. A few kids tried to pick on me there, and it didn't go well for them. I was by far the meanest kid in my class, and squashed any BS from those sheltered white Christian punks very early in the school year.

However, I used to ride my bike back and forth to school there. Some older boys were hassling me and other kids in the afternoon, off of school grounds, on the way home. I would just ride away from them because they were on foot, but then they started throwing rocks at me one day. Next time I carried a fold-out box cutter, pulled it out on them when they started some shit with me. They ran like bitches. Later, I had to lie my way out of that, and tell the principal it was just a fingernail file. Fortunately I had a fingernail file with a red plastic handle at home, which looked a lot like that box cutter.

Fourth grade, I left the city and moved into a semi-rural area with my dad. I fought a lot of rednecks, won some, lost some, but generally established myself as someone not to be fucked with. Went to school with that bunch until 9th grade.

10th grade, moved to the SF bay area. Last real time I had any violent trouble over my race, I was with one of my best friends, who was this tri-racial dude who looked black, and a couple of white guys we knew. We had just gone behind this pool hall where we hung out and smoked some herb. On the way back around this thrift store to the pool hall, this huge black dude and this smaller Chicano dude, older guys who had been drinking at the pool hall, came up to us. This Mexican dude singled me out and wanted to know why I had started shit with his "cousin Mario"? I tried to talk my way out of it, basically pinned up against the wall by these guys, while my friends stood there watching. I had no clue who this guy or his cousin Mario was. He wasn't taking no for an answer and smacked me in the jaw, but it was weak. I'm a lefty and he didn't see it coming, I stuck him hard with a left in his mouth. He got stunned by that and fell back some, but this giant black guy clocked me in the forehead, which also bounced the back of my head against the stone wall I was backed into. I had knots on the front and back of my head from that later, LOL. My black-ish friend jumped into this guys face and started talking to him, black on black stuff, I had just moved from out of state and they had the wrong guy. Meanwhile, Mario's unnamed cousin and I engaged in blows, while these two white dudes stood and watched. Nothing conclusive came out of that engagement. Then the huge black dude (who I later learned was from Oakland and freshly released from jail), convinced by my homey, grabbed his friend and told him to chill.

That was the last time I recall of being a victim of violence over racism, and no racism has affected me in particular during the course of my life. As Spark mentioned earlier in the thread, it is often handy to be one thing and be able to pass as another. Asians got major grief out in the bay area but I passed as white and hung out with whites, my tri-racial homey, and his brothers, so it wasn't my problem.

Other racism I have encountered, institutional stuff like getting pulled over in a black neighborhood for being white (a couple of miles from my house) hasn't really been a problem for me.