Really?!?!?!

WARNING: This post is a vent post. Don't read if you don't want to hear a little griping.

Last week Phillip and I took the boys to the pool at Tims Ford State Park. We had a fantastic day. The diving boards there are supreme - lots of bounce for flips, twists, and dives.

There was this one thing though. There were three young men there who happened to be African-American. Two of them are students at the high school where Phillip teaches and the third had already graduated. I taught the third young man, and I can honestly say that he is one of my favorite students ever. I have a picture of Grant hugging on him at homecoming his freshman year.

Now I know that I live in a small Southern town, but I guess I am naive in the thought that racism was pretty much dead. Inter-racial relationships are very common where we live, and I haven't heard overt racist comments in a long time. Until these young men decided to jump off the diving boards.

There was a group of 5-6 Caucasian kids, some of whom are fellow students of the young men, standing about 10 feet behind me in the pool, which was about 20 feet from the diving boards. If they made one racist joke about African-Americans, they made 10. They were saying disgusting things, laughing, and making fun. My blood was boiling, and the mean middle school teacher in me was ready to come out. Thankfully they never said THAT WORD or else I would have looked like Michael Phelps swimming through the pool to give them a piece of my mind. They finally left, and I was able to enjoy the rest of the day. When I told Phillip what they were saying he was just as angry as I was. I think we were both dumbfounded, too. Neither of us thought people still talked like that.

I'm glad that our children don't know about those types of people yet. Eventually they'll have to learn, but hopefully we have prepared them to fight against stereotypes and ignorance.

-Ashley