Letter from a White Kid in a Black Summer Camp
Good morning Colin,
A friend of mine recently sent me a link to one of your podcasts where you played the 911 calls from the Louisville, Kentucky mobs that targeted white people. He urged me to share my story with you because of your episode discussing the myth of white children picking on black kids due to their race.
I’m a 37 year old white man. In the summer of 1990, between third and fourth grade, my mother worked in downtown Louisville as a secretary at the Army Corps. of Engineers building. Out of convenience, she put me in the downtown YMCA summer care program. I was the only white kid there for almost the entire summer (there was a two week period where there was a white brother and sister also attended).
From day one, I was targeted constantly. Beaten up, choked, locked in lockers, stolen from on an almost daily basis just for the fact that I was white. Even the high school aged kids would do things like throw basketballs at my head. One of the counselors in charge (a 25-30 year old black man) called me a “little white faggot”.
Any black kids that tried to befriend me were shunned for it, so friends were few and far between. This place was a daily living hell. This was the most racism that I have ever experienced or witnessed in my life and it was not in the direction that is perpetuated by our media and schools.
