But the gathering at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church occasionally grew heated. One speaker said Haitians “have smells to them. They’re not like us. They’re not here to be Americanized. They don’t care about schools. They’re scary, folks.”
Other comments dealt with city police, which some said don’t have enough officers or funding to deal with issues caused by immigration and proper code enforcement.
If the city was able to adequately enforce housing codes, some said, it would cause a homelessness problem.
I had the opposite experience but with the same good outcome as you. I was a white kid in the 80s who moved from an all-white school (I think there was one black kid in the entire school) to a suburban school that would have been all-white but it bussed in kids from the inner city. I know that added exposure helped me break out of the cycle of racism I realized later was so prevalent at my earlier school. It’s almost like having experience with something helps you understand it better… wild concept.
I was bullied relentlessly in school, but not by black kids. Maybe they understood being different, or the experiences of casual racism made them more empathetic, but it left a lasting mark.