And don’t even get started with the lunchroom. That was discouraging.
Do tell.
It was terrible. You know how I know about 30% of my school was comprised of minorities when only about four of them were ever in any of my classes? Because an aerial view of the lunchroom would easily have shown that a 30% contiguous chunk of it was occupied by minorites, while another 70% contiguous chunk was entirely white kids. Pretty much zero mixing except at the sparsely-occupied border tables (read: poor white kids like my friends, who, I’ll be honest, were frequently racist as shit, but they didn’t have the money to sit elsewhere). The side of the lunchroom with the outdoor view? White (and rich). Now this was probably exaggerated by “you sit by your classroom friends and the classrooms are segregated, so of course the lunchroom is segregated” but shit. Every single day it’s right there in the open for everyone to see, and every single day it’s normal. Late eighties, Ohio.
Was it against the rules of the school for black kids to sit in the area with the view? Did one have to pay to sit at this “rich” table? If it was voluntary, I am not sure what should be done, short of making rule requiring each student to sit next to a kid of different race at lunch.
Still beats the other district I attended which had the only black family move in while my sister was in high school. They got a cross burned in their yard, and didn’t stay.
Now that is depressing. You would think by now that kind of thing would no longer happen.