AskBeehaw

Yes. I moved in third grade and I was the only Asian boy in a public school system in the American south, in a very small town of less than 250.

I got picked on relentlessly. I never had friends. Every slur imaginable from everyone. People ganged up and fought me on the playground. At least once a week. I got a reputation for always getting into fights in third grade and so I was always in timeout because I was new and obviously the problem. I gave up on teachers because they always favored the white kids.

At one point, they spray painted swastikas and KKK on our house. Then the sheriff deputy showed up, they said it must have been me, because I had a bad reputation. A black lady cop and a white guy cop. The lady cop took the lead and insisted because nobody had any motive to vandalize our house like that, we were not black. It must have just been me, the twelve year old who was in school when it happened. Case closed boys, pack it up and let's head home.

I ended up associating with the kids who also got bullied for things far behind their control. Being poor, having bad teeth, ill-fitting clothes, for example. My best friend had a physical disability. Although eventually, he decided to pick on my ancestry when he thought it would make him friends, and so I stopped hanging out with him.

In high school, I was vocally mean to bullies because they picked on my friends. Bullies also had significant overlap with the "Young Life" crowd, and so I associated it with their religion. I did very well with grades so the teachers did not intervene. I bullied the bullies. People were scared of me. I was kind of like a stick of dynamite, I could go off on anybody. I did not care because getting in trouble was no better than not being in trouble. I was also very physically fit and played basketball, but I was not friends with anyone on the team and had no social life with them. They were greedy with the ball and when we lost in the tournament, I laughed because I thought they deserved it.

I do not talk to any of those people, except my girlfriend who is now my wife. She had a similar treatment being Hispanic, until she had her glow up and everybody who had picked on her started chasing after her. That is gross because guys thought they were entitled to her as a brown girl. That is her story to tell.

I never felt accepted anywhere until I moved to California and suddenly I was not always conscious of being the only brown guy, I was just another person, and I was like is this how other people live?

Our kids go to a very accepting school now and it's different for them.