In 2000, Remember the Titans made it's debut on the movie screen. It portrays the true story about the integration of T.C. Williams football team. It is T.C. William's biggest claim to fame. T.C. Williams happens to be my future high school and I have heard stories from people who went to school there during that period in time, if not during the initial integration. It was pretty rough. If you walked into my middle school today, you would probably think ACPS (Alexandria City Public Schools) still struggles with racism. Except for, we don't. True, tables at lunch are more-or-less divided by race. True, racial jokes fly with hummingbird-speed wings. But I can explain.

Major Ethnicities at My Middle School

1. African-American

2. Caucasian

3. Hispanic

People of the same ethnicities and economic classes tend to have similar ideas of what is popular, similar interests, similar ways of talking...similar cultures. Naturally, they will group together. That's common knowledge. But the school also naturally divides races. My school has two classes for science, language arts, and social studies: regular and honors. When you sign up for classes, you choose which one you would like to take. (Honors is supposed to move faster and require more critical thinking skills, but the difference between honors and regular varies from teacher to teacher.)
This is where the separations happen.
1. Most of the white students sign up for honors (of course, there are several who don't)
2. Most of the black students don't sign up for honors (though there are many who do)
3. Most of the Hispanics don't sign up for honors (again, there are many exceptions), and many are in ESL (English as a Second Language)
It is important to state that there are many, many, many exceptions. However, this is the basic idea.

As for insults, it doesn't take a long time to realize that they're not said in hatred. There are certainly people who take them seriously, and everyone should. Is it not worrying that, by the age of eleven or twelve, kids know enough stereotypes to insult one another with them? Is it not worrying that stereotypes are so played up in our society as a whole? Of course it is. Unfortunately, if you take the insults seriously, you will feel hurt.

It is a little ironic that, even though everyone knows these stereotypes, they are not common occurrences at our middle school. We don't have the preppy white kids who wear knee socks and are clueless to other cultures. We have just as many Hispanics and whites who wear chains and low pants as we do blacks. We have our own version of these stereotypes. We do have kids who are preppy, but they aren't clueless, and they aren't always white.

Basically, appearances can be misleading. It is extremely hard to keep every lunch table diverse, just as it is hard to keep stereotypes out of society. Overall, my middle school is pretty decent in that regard.

But I'm on Spring Break now, so I don't have to deal with all that.