Jena 6

[Buzz]

When I started school in 1961, we still had segregated schools, in my area intergration came about in my freshman year in high school...... The four years prior, we had "freedon of choice", anyone could attend any school in the district, in those four years we had a total of three blacks come to the white schools!!!!!!!!!!We had ZERO problems all thru my four years in high school....had many black friends then and still do today, but one thing I found interesting then and even today is that when asked, a very large majority of blacks prefer segregated schools,in fact some groups of blacks have asked the federal judges in charge of the segregation laws to reverse the laws so that black only schools can be re-opened.......

These facts do not surprise me one bit, David. Put yourself in the shoes of a young black kid "back in the day". Would you personally want to go into a hostile environment and bear the brunt of dealing daily with slurs, isolation, white only proms, threats or even just living with the constant knowledge that you are NOT welcome? Hell no! Just because the nature of the environment makes someone uncomfortable about being there, it doesn't mean they think it's ok to institutionally deny them the right to be there if they so choose. It is absolutely no shock to me that many black students even today in certain parts of the South would prefer to be in an all black school for the same reasons. That does not mean that blacks want to go back to the days of segregation or that segregation is a good thing.
BTW, I am not heated, angry or uncomfortable about discussing this - it's just an interesting topic and I don't take any of this personally. The subject is interesting because we have two different points of view to share. I do not expect your P.O.V. to be any less legit and correct to you than mine is to me. At the very worst we each get some food for thought to chew on.