still ires me
I was about 9. There were kids from all backgrounds in my school. Racism just didn't exist for us, none of us could be bothered with it. Of course you got playground mocking if you were rubbish at football, or told outlandish lies, or whatever, but we'd all grown up together so we weren't at all fussed what colour each of us was.

One kid, formerly a friend of mine, decided one morning that he was going to tell everyone how many languages he could speak. He was Indian and apparently he learnt lots of dialects at school there (none of us twigged that he'd left India aged three, the only school he'd ever been to was the same one as us) and in a generally irrelevant-to-the-conversation way kept on going on about how wonderful his home country was. Fair enough, we thought.

So at lunchtime while lining up to go back into class we were all discussing who was well skill at football that lunchtime and said kid cuts in with a line about how football came from India.

- I'd like to point out, by the way, that this kid had never even mentioned the country in our school time together up until this point. -

At least three of us tell him to shut up. To one kid he says "oh, go back to Chelmsford." (the child's origin). The instant retaliation? "ah, go back to India."

The kid pauses, grins and runs off to the dinner ladies to tell on us.

One huge, screaming bollocking later, five of us spent the afternoon sitting shame-faced outside the headmaster's office, staring at the carpet and waiting for our parents to come and pick us up. Suspended for an afternoon for "racist taunting."

We still didn't care about his nationality, but that kid was a little shit.
( sanityclause is waiting until, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:42, Reply)