the awful truth

I am racist.

I look at these kids and I see black kids. When I look at Asian or Hispanic kids, I just see kids, just as I see white kids. For some deeply ingrained reason unknown to me, I have a difficult time looking at black kids the same way. Even in kindergarten they have the accent, they have the dance moves, they have the lingo down and I see little black people whom I immediately associate with bad neighborhoods, gangs, major attitude from the girls and general rudeness from the boys. I work at a private Catholic K-8 school where most of the kids (about 90% of whom are black) get picked up by their (obviously also black) parents in Mercedes-Benz's and Beemers. Most likely they have stable homes and loving families who read to them every night and help them with their homework. They don't have the same behavior and motivation problems that I saw in the charter public schools I've subbed for over the past few weeks. They don't, never did and probably never will know street life, and most of them will go to college when they grow up. The fact that I still have to train myself to change the way I view them tells me that affirmative action is the right thing to do. Income based affirmative action should be the main social factor in college admissions, but race still matters. Too much.