Pre-Kindergarten through Eighth Grade, I attended a Catholic Elementary school.  I feel like that has been beaten to death through my posts, papers, and reflections.  However, I have mostly talked about how important I believe it is for children to learn from other children to develop socially, and how that is the main purpose of school at an early age.

However, an education like this could be dangerous.

I do not take back any of my convictions.  Kids learn from other kids.  Thats what school does.  One would think that a Catholic school or a private school would be the ideal place to learn.  However, I could argue for public school, because often a private school is lacking in one thing– diversity.

Pre-Kindergarten through Eighth Grade, I had a graduating class of under forty.  One kid was homosexual. Three kids were hispanic-American.  Three kids were overweight.  The other thirty-one were white, straight, athletic, and therefore “normal”.  The other kids took their lumps.

Now, it is grade school.  Everyone takes their lumps.  I wore my uniform pants as long as I possibly could, and get my lumps for having tight pants when the style was baggy.  Other kids were teased for being too short or too tall.  My best friend from grade school was nicknamed “Spanish” after the movie old school.  I still call him by the name Spanish to this day, it is not something that bothered him.  I do not want to give the impression that my school was the birthplace for the new Klu Klux Klan, but there was not a lot of diversity.  We were never exposed to diversity until we went to high school.  The only black kids I knew going into high school were the few that I played basketball with at the neighborhood courts.

This is a major problem.  I did not grow up in a heavy white neighborhood.  It was actually becoming increasingly a mix of hispanic, asian, and african descent.  I would have never known this at my grade school.  Now if one goes back there, the population of the school more accurately reflects the community.

Too bad I did not get this exposure in grade school, because it would have helped in high school.

During my first few months at private Catholic high school, I sat with kids I went to grammar school with.  Mostly white kids surrounded me.  We adopted a few kids from Floral Park, also stemming from a majority white school (and in their case, area too).  We were white trash, they were wealthy whites, and together we made the all-white table.  There was a Greeks only table, a blacks only table, a Haitians only table, a Howard Beach table, a fake “guido” table for all the future wannabe John Gotti’s, there were the smoker’s at one table and the nerds at their own table.  Kind of cliquey for an all boys school, huh?

Where else was I expected to sit?  I was never exposed to that many black kids, nor did they want a white kid at their table.  Our table were pegged as racists, some of them embracing the all-white theme and enforcing it.  I admit at some points in that first year I participated in this bigotry, and am very ashamed of it.  There may be a few kids who still remember and probably would testify that I was a racist, something that eats at me every day.  I was a product of my environment, and at 14 years old, I was not strong enough to fight out of it.

Thank God I played football.

Anyone who reads my posts must think I am some kind of fanatic.  It must seem like every good thing in my life a credit to football.  Well, I was tagged as a racist, on a football team with fifty kids, more than half of whom were black or hispanic.  By year two, not many of those kids would have had my back.  I do have to say I was really saved by a few kids on the team.  At a time where I had “friends” and “black friends”, the latter group were some of the true friends.  One teammate in particular always knew the truth.  He knew I was just a product of the environment, knew I was just sitting at that table because thats where I sat down day one.  He vouched for me to a lot of people, who gave me the chance to prove their idea of me wrong.  And I am proud to say I did with more than 99% of the cases.

I have not been called a racist in probably 3 years, and I have not had any problems with it at all.  I have been called many names, but intolerant is not one of them.  There are a handful of kids at that table who are still ranting about how minorities and gays and women are the root of all problems.  The ignorance is unbelievable.  One of the best decisions I made in high school was to blow them off and find a new table to sit at.

So yes, I learned as a young one not to hit my fellow classmates.  I never learned to accept them.  And it almost buried me.  I hate that part of my past, and it is difficult for me to share it.  Honestly, if it was a larger class I would not have been able to.

I often fell under the label of “jock” for my lifetime.  You guys are are techies, science fiction people.  By labels, you are not my people.  If I was put in this class right out of elementary school, I would have a hard time talking to you and sharing with you, even over the internet.

Good thing thats not the case, because apparently I feel comfortable enough to talk about this now, when I never really spoke about it publicly before.  I was blessed with a second chance, a chance to add the virtue acceptance that I did not get a chance to add due to a lack of diversity at a young age.

I feel that being pegged as something I was not made me adverse to pegging other people.  I like to believe while I may not always be described as the friendliest person, the people who know me are never afraid that I would judge them (unless they are from Staten Island, that is a different story altogether).