This is a docuseries of my own accounts. It’s a story about my interactions with law enforcement and racism that I have faced.
What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.
Part 2
The blacks in the school once warmed up to me welcomed me with open arms. Some say that it was because of my Hispanic background, but I only know that I was accepted and appreciated.
Regardless, the division of the races for me was very difficult to understand. For the people in the area, it was what it was because they all seemed so used to it.
I recall a funny but not so funny story about the KKK. Yeah, seeing those 3 letters together sends chills down my spine. My family and I were still fresh to the area and one day we were driving somewhere and we pulled up to a stoplight and there was a guy in the median asking for money for his organization, the KKK. He was wearing a long white robe and a hood over his face. Not knowing the story I asked my mom what were they doing dressed up, it wasn’t Halloween.
Awkwardly laughing my mom tells us what they were all about. Across the street from where the clansman was, was a Krispy Kreme Donut shop and from that day moving forward I nicknamed them the Krispy Kreme Killers. (Ya gotta laugh because it is pretty damn funny) I can still recall the disbelief that there could ever be people filled with such hatred.
The racial tension in the schools and the city was very overwhelming. At my high school, we had race wars. No, it wasn’t the cool car races like in The Fast and The Furious. It was fighting in the schools between the whites and the blacks. The few Asians and Hispanics were pretty much on the sidelines watching the battles.
Being in the south there was a lot of the whites that displayed the rebel flag wherever they went, so they could make a bold statement of hate along with heritage. The racism seemed to be passed down from generation to generation. In our school, you knew there was going to be a day of fighting when you would see the white kids driving in a big group of trucks and cars with the big rebel flags attached.
It was crazy to witness the anger and rage from the white kids as they started yelling racial slurs at the black students. All the black students could do was to band together with other black kids. Then almost like clockwork, once it was lunchtime all of the anger will spill over into the hallways, and bam, a big brawl would start. Books, backpacks, and papers flying everywhere along with the punches. Teachers could never get the fighting to stop. In most cases, the cops were called.
To add to all this racial tension we had several gangs with members in our school. The gangs were mostly black, so we also had gang fights in the school. This was insane as well because you just never knew when fights were going to break out. I was very lucky to survive my high school years solely based on the fact that me and my other Puerto Rican buddy were the comedians in the school. We were pretty much off-limits so that worked out great!
In my sophomore year of high school, I decided to join my own gang. It was in a police department as an explorer. This was a program for high schoolers to learn and train with police offers before joining the police academy. I had always wanted to be a police officer so it was an amazing experience. I had the rare opportunity to train with the swat teams in south Atlanta. We did rappelling, tactical shooting drills, investigations, and everything in between.
To be continued…
