Imagine yourself as the lone black student in an entirely white high school, out in the wilds of Montana. Imagine that just a few days after you have enrolled, a rumor goes around that another student is threatening to hang you and drag you behind the back of his truck.
Imagine that some of the white kids start to decorate their cars with the confederate flag, and to wear T-shirts with the same symbol.
That’s what happened to Darius Ivory after he moved from Houston to Livingston, Montana. RawStory reports that the school responded to the racist taunts in two ways.
First they spoke to the boy who had made the threats. While he denied making the horrifying threats against Ivory’s life, he freely admitted being racist. He told school administrators that he had had bad experiences with black people, and just plain didn’t like them.
The second administrative response was to ban the Confederate flag, a known symbol of racist thinking. The flag had already caused problems at the school, when some students tore it off of the offending cars and burned it.
Administrators wanted an end to the racial tension quickly.
Instead, more students reacted to the ban, feeling that their freedom of expression was being curtailed. That’s about the time Darius Ivory gave everyone a lesson in how to end racial tensions.
He found time to meet and speak to the racist boy who had started the whole problem. The two talked for over an hour. They got to know each other. They have gotten together a few more times.
And here are the words of the very wise and incredibly mature Darius Ivory, who at 19-years-old already understands what it means to have an open mind:
On the Confederate flag:
“I don’t see it as a bad thing. I’m not a slave, and it takes way more than flying a flag to faze me.”
On the student who didn’t like black people before getting to know him:
“We’ve hung out a couple times. He is a cool kid. I like him.”
There’s a lesson in here that we could all learn from.
Featured image via Joseph Augstell, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
