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I too experienced something in late elementary school that affected my views on racism and stereotypes, but it was not positive. I went to a very middle class school. It was mostly white, but had a few blacks and hispanics. Our classes were pretty multicultural for the time. I remember a Jewish Girl's mother coming to talk to us about Haunakah (sp?) and we ate Jewish food. Same thing for this kid that was Indian. There was a black girl that lived down the street, and we got off at the same busstop. She was a friend, and I remember her name, Janelle.
That happy environment changed however, when for the next grade, all the students had to get up at the crack of dawn to catch a school bus that took us to a brand new inner city school, where we stuck out like sore thumbs. The next year, the same thing happened in reverse. (they came to our school, but I wasn't there for that) Unlike alot of kids, my parents couldn't afford to put me into private school the year we were bused to the inner city. The administrators, for reasons I never figured out, but I suspect had to do with parental complaints, soon switched from classes randomly mixed to organizing classes based on our "reading groups." I was happy, because I was back with all my friends. They really did have a class of almost all smart middle class kids, a class of medium middle class kids, a somewhat mixed class of not so bright middle class kids and the "natives" and several more classes of the inner city kids that I couldn't distinguish between. There were a few bright inner city kids sprinkled among the middle class kids too, but mostly it was a huge charade for the balancing of races within the school district.
It was a mostly harmful charade too. I alluded to the fact that it became "us" and "them" quickly, and yes, we referred to them as "natives" (technically correct, because they lived near the school, and we did not, but still derogatory.) I became far more aware of material things, and we tried to dress as nice and preppy as we could to distinguish ourselves from the "natives." We made fun of them, and I'm sure they did the same to us. The classes seldom mixed for recess or assemblies. Suddenly black people in my mind were not represented by Janelle and her family, but became the poor people that wore ratty t-shirts and parachute pants, put oil in their hair, and couldn't read. They were bigger than us, in part because many of them had repeated grades. We were scared of them. "We" were smarter, had more money, looked down upon and did not want to associate with "them." Strong evidence of all the cultural stereotypes was right there in front of us, and for "them" as well.
The Indian family and the Jewish family could both afford to send their children to private schools, and did. Somehow Janelle's family did too. As you can probably tell, that year made quite an impression on an impressionable boy. The one positive was that by being in a class with only the more academically advanced kids, we were allowed to accelerate, and that gave me a head start in school when our family moved to a smaller town the next year. I wish, though, that our teacher could have just done something like the blue-eye thing. It was probably alot better lesson in tolerance and acceptence.
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