Yeah but you are in the deep south. I was in suburban Kansas City (aka Johnson County) which is well, wealthy. Very different worlds.
Rural PA did get desegregated in the mid 1970s. I remember that well and is actually more comparable to your experience in some respects. The elementary school closest to where I lived (15-20 minutes) - was all white, the one that we got switched to after a de-segregation zoning law was passed, was an hour and a half away. I actually liked the second school better and found the racial diversity wonderful. Finally I had some cool friends, I stopped being teased, and these two wonderful black guys took me under their wing. It lasted six-seven months, before my family moved from rural/suburban PA in the middle of the 5th grade to Kansas City, and to a much wealthier school district. We went from the bottom school district to one of the top in the country (public school wise). And the new school district was 99% white. So was the neighborhood. This was NOT deliberate on my parents part. It just happened. They didn't really research it. And we never fit in or belonged.
In Law School - I saw more of a mix but not by much - still 85% white. And Kansas was an abolutionist state, unlike Missouri which was a slave state. John Brown was Kansas. Kansas has been Republican since the Civil War and never changed. It's a weird state. I had friends who weren't white. But they were clearly in the minority. What I love about NYC is the diversity.
The Deep South...is more diverse. I remember talking to a woman on a plane on the way home from Maine, she was from Alabama, and kept commenting on how white the population of Maine was. The only blacks she saw appeared to be tourists.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-03-27 11:38 pm (UTC)Rural PA did get desegregated in the mid 1970s. I remember that well and is actually more comparable to your experience in some respects. The elementary school closest to where I lived (15-20 minutes) - was all white, the one that we got switched to after a de-segregation zoning law was passed, was an hour and a half away. I actually liked the second school better and found the racial diversity wonderful. Finally I had some cool friends, I stopped being teased, and these two wonderful black guys took me under their wing. It lasted six-seven months, before my family moved from rural/suburban PA in the middle of the 5th grade to Kansas City, and to a much wealthier school district. We went from the bottom school district to one of the top in the country (public school wise). And the new school district was 99% white. So was the neighborhood. This was NOT deliberate on my parents part. It just happened. They didn't really research it. And we never fit in or belonged.
In Law School - I saw more of a mix but not by much - still 85% white. And Kansas was an abolutionist state, unlike Missouri which was a slave state. John Brown was Kansas. Kansas has been Republican since the Civil War and never changed. It's a weird state. I had friends who weren't white. But they were clearly in the minority. What I love about NYC is the diversity.
The Deep South...is more diverse. I remember talking to a woman on a plane on the way home from Maine, she was from Alabama, and kept commenting on how white the population of Maine was. The only blacks she saw appeared to be tourists.