For the past few days, my social studies class has procrastinated doing worksheets by sucking our teacher into conversations. And I am sure I am learning more from these conversations than any worksheet in the world.

We are learning about the civil rights movement right now. Our teacher began by asking us, a predominantly white honors class, how we would feel during this time period as a black...and as a white. Everyone cringed. We'd feel awkward, we said, guilty, uncomfortable. She asked us; what if we were raised that way? No one could answer.

She showed us a black-and-white picture of two schools. One was small with a group of black school children out front. The other was large and had well-kept lawns. We looked at the first one. Tell me what this is, she said. It's an old black school, someone yelled out. We talked about it awhile. We looked at the other one. And that's an old white school, someone else yelled. "How do you know?" Our teacher said, "There's no sign, no white children..."

"Well, we assumed..."We all started. We assumed.

For these past two days, that has been the basis for our conversations. We assume. But usually the assumptions we named were ones that we assumed others assumed about us.

Things That We Think Others Assume About Us

-That whites are rich, in all honors, and kind of snotty

-That blacks are rude

-That if your in an honors class (especially if you're black), you're a nerd

-That only blacks have problems at home

-All blacks are 'ghetto'

"Ghetto?" Our teacher asked, "Define 'ghetto'". No one said it was coming from a certain place or a background. Everything that was said was about appearance and actions. So different from the original use of the word.

"Wearing your pants on the ground." Someone said. 

"I wear my pants on the ground," a boy pointed out, "and I'm white."

"Drinking Kool-Aid," someone else yelled. 

"White kids can't drink Kool-Aid?" Our teacher laughed. We all laughed at the absurdity of it. There wasn't really a difference. And yet, if one of the white boys went up to someone and said "Yo, wasup homie", they'd automatically be told, "You're way too white." 

Even the vocabulary, though, is not all that different. Beast, cool, legit, sweet, 'sup...everyone uses them; blacks, whites, and hispanics.

As for whites being rich and snotty; yes, most of the whites at our school are from families with larger incomes, but it isn't as if anyone is proud of it. At one point the student who was talking about that very stereotype named a street with very large houses on it. Another kid, who lives on that street hid under the table. Money is not flaunted at our school.

And here's the other interesting thing. We all assume others assume things about us, but no one said they actually assume something about other people. 

So, do we assume and just aren't telling, or are we assuming without even realizing it? Or are we stuck in a tangle of imaginary assumptions of other people's assumptions? 

But isn't incredible we can all talk about it?

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.