I've publicly apologized for my role in public school integration. I was wrong to support racial integration but I didn't know what an alternative was at the time.
Now I realize that public school racial integration was a bigger disaster than I thought. In openly discussing my apology I have learned from five reliable close friends and family members who were in integrated schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Sacramento that the situation was horrific, much worse than has ever been publicly disclosed. Not only did racial integration chase out whites, lower the educational standards and failed the primary goal of integrating neighborhoods...but the non-black kids who remained in the schools were treated viciously.
The presence of a large number of black kids in the public schools meant (and still means) that non-black boys and girls were (and are) constantly threatened with the loss of their lives, mugged, beat up and incessantly abused. The data is tangible and shocking.
This situation is unacceptable, disgraceful...a harsh tear in the social fabric and a social blight that is intolerable. It was and it is.