I was a little cute kid, couldn't have been older than 6 or 7.
I was on the BART train in San Francisco (Underground/underwater subway system in the San Francisco-Bay Area) and unbeknownst to me, I was sitting right across from a neo-nazi. He had a swastika and other symbols tattooed and some teenage girls actually came and got me and moved me to another car with them That's the first time I can remember even thinking about race.
The police force is very weak and limited in Oakland, so they don't harass at the same level as other police forces. They're too busy dealing with actual crimes.. but they won't even come into some hoods.
I grew up around an extremely diverse population.. name any race, and any class, all were together and got along perfectly without any problems. It was truly beautiful looking back at it. The Bay Area is a very special place. You would have inner city black kids best friends with rich white kids, Australian kids with Indian kids, Latinas with Bosnians, British with Japanese, and everyone intermingling and getting along having fun.
In my Junior year of high school (for this one year I was in San Diego ) I was one of the only two black kids in a class of mine, and the other one didn't show up to this class that often, so I was effectively the only black kid. One of my teachers would make jokes about how blacks can't swim, and routinely put on ghetto voices and speak in ebonics.. it was a thing of his where he would make lists with statistics, for example:
Sarah 18.9s
John 14.4s
Lauren 16.7s
LaQueesha 37.6s
This would be swimming times that we would use for calculations.
He also said at least a couple times that blacks are superior athletes because they bred the strongest in slavery.
I felt like a fish out of water, and didn't do anything about it, even though I regret it looking back. I ended up never going to his class, but your boy still earned that A easily. What destroyed my innocence when it comes to race was being surrounded by nothing but upper class conservative whites who had grown up with upper class conservative whites.. nothing overt happened, but you could just feel the pressure surrounding you constantly. I made friends with the black kids of course, and there was curious white/Asian p*ssy to go around. I also became friends with a good amount of white kids. However, they would always tell me about other people coming up to them and asking why they were friends with a ******/******s. This wasn't surprising though, because when you're in an environment like that you can just feel the vibes of hatred and prejudice bouncing off of you.
Edit: I have another story, lmao, just remembered this one.
Bro that laquesha one is straight from the GED test I don't even want to lie to you.