Besides bruises and my school stuff being scattered, they took my sense of safety and security away. They made me fearful of walking home. I suffered a range of emotions including what some would call racism as I generalized my experience with what was going on with the race riots at the time. This attack was all about skin color and happened in broad daylight.

Fortunately for me, as I got older, sports and working gave me many opportunities to understand people. I realized people are individuals and to judge them based on who they were and not the color of their skin.

As I have related previously two of the younger members of the group that beat me up became friends through sports a few years later.

Now our society is trying once again to judge people by the color of their skin rather than there individual behavior. Some argue that racism is so natural it cannot be helped and so we need to design our society around it. I disagree.

It is easy to see how racism can develop in people who experience racism. So an African American or white or Asian are at risk of becoming racist if they were a victim of racism. But we need to resist that. People deserve to be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin.