Racism on High

I’m a teenage, American, Caucasian male, I’m the bad guy of every story of hardship and intolerance. It’s pretty easy to place blame on everything you see, but it must have been hard for the creator of Racism High to convince all of its students that that’s just and right. I shouldn’t say all its students, I go to Racism High and I don’t really see the big deal with other races.

Like every day, when I woke up I got dressed, grabbed my ID card and walked outside to the bus stop. Down the street I could see a brown bus coming, it passed me and everyone inside it looked like they wanted to kill me. From the other direction a white bus came to a stop in front of me and opened its doors with a hiss. I scanned my ID card in the small thing near the stairs up into the bus. A blue screen read out loud, “Race confirmed, please proceed.” Apparently, I was in fact white, what a shocker.

For me the bus was like Hell, I was the only guy onboard not itching to “kill some niggers” or “stab a few wetbacks”. I wondered what it was like on the black or brown or yellow buses. Were there people on those buses thinking the same thoughts about me? Whatever their thoughts, they didn’t know me and couldn’t justify their hatred. This whole school system was a total joke.

When the bus arrived at Racism High I waited for all the others to usher out of the bus before I stepped out. The buildings were color coded to make it easier to find your race. The guards wore face masks and full body suits with kevlar vests and the outfit made it impossible for anyone to tell their skin color. These guards ushered us into the white building and closed the double doors behind us.

Of course all our teachers were white, this was after all, the white building. I took my seat by the window and looked out across the dirt grounds between the buildings. All of our activities were in the building of our color, even the physical activities are held in an indoor field. In a window of the black building I could see a boy my age glaring at me. We had never met before.

The teacher closed the window shudders and smacked my desk with a ruler. “You know better than to look over there Alan.” What he meant was that if I wasn’t scowling then I shouldn’t be looking at anyone with a different skin color than mine. I looked back at the board, it outlined why the white race was supposedly better than all the others. It was the same crap that had been discussed in class all week.

In Competition class we were getting a so-called “special treat” today, they were going to put us up against the Mexicans in a game of nation ball. I enjoyed the game, but whenever we were put up against another race riots would always break out. What’s worse is I think that the school planned for these riots. Either way we filed out of the white building and into a gray arena.

The other team was waiting for us on the opposite side of the floor and I could tell they hated us. My classmates returned the glares, I just stood on the line and waited for the game whistle to be blown. When it was everyone went wild. They grabbed the balls and began to throw them with such force that they knocked their targets to the floor. One of the Mexicans in particular was doing very well, bowling my classmates over while dodging balls all at the same time.

My coached were speaking behind the line, eyeing the boy. One of them pulled a knife from his pocket and nodded in the boy’s direction, the other coach agreed. A whistle blew for time out and the coaches gathered up the team. I could see the coach hand the knife to one of the players, he did nothing to hide it from us because he knew we all would agree. Well, I didn’t…

The whistle blew again the boy with the knife picked up a ball and threw it at his target. When the Mexican dodged he didn’t see the boy preparing to throw the knife at him, but I did. Taking up a ball I threw it into the boy with the knife and knocked him over. The coaches’ whistles blew again and now it was my white classmates that were glaring at me. I suddenly felt very alone, and very scared. A coach grabbed each arm and hauled me back to the white building where I would meet with the Principal.

His office was like a sci-fi movie, everything was smoothed and white, the electronics were all touchscreen. I wanted every badly to run away. “So…you want to be one of those stupid bean loving wetbacks?”

“What?”

“Why else would you help one of those monkeys?”

“Because this school is a joke! People need diversity to expand their minds and advance their lives, we can’t just stay welled up in the same cesspool of ignorance all our lives!”

The principal only shook his head with a laugh, “Alan, I’m afraid thoughts like those are not okay…you will have to be punished.”

I wasn’t sure what happened next, only that a sudden burst of pain on the back of my head sent me into darkness. When I woke up I was in the middle of the main hallway. A bell rang above my head to signal the end of the period. Thousands of my classmates poured into the hallway and stopped, all looking at me. I was suddenly aware that the whole school knew what I had done and in this school that was very bad.

As a classmate passed I got the sudden sensation that my side was on fire. I looked down to see blood dripping through a cut in my white shirt. When I looked up a fist collided with my face and sent me wheeling to the white tile floor. Boots began colliding with my body all over and I was startlingly aware that I wouldn’t be getting up. There was no one in this school that agreed with me, no one that would help me.

Blood flooded my eyes from a cut on my head and my whole body was going cold. I couldn’t feel the pain anymore, but they were still kicking me from what I could see. One managed to get my eye and another crushed in my nose. It was no longer a matter of racism, they just wanted me dead. I was the antithesis to their ideology and white or not they wanted to kill me.

Some days later a newspaper ran, “White boy killed in brown building” it read. The school was in an uproar, the whites knew they did it, the brown knew they didn’t, and the blacks and yellows just wanted something to be pissed about. In the end my death only helped fuel everything I hated about that school.