Over decades, St. Louis would become a devastated victim of white flight, a term so prevalent throughout my Midwestern life that I am astounded when I come across someone with no notion of it. Race relations crippled the once-thriving river city, narrow, whitewashed minds burning my generation’s modern opportunities along with their figurative crosses. Refusing to settle for less than systemic racial warfare, they were hell-bent on executing a kamikaze mission, decimating the economic potential of the entire region for years to come. The quality of our public school system paid the price along with our beautiful metropolis, transformed into crumbling piles of bricks entrenched in pre-Civil Rights movement despair.
Refusing to subscribe to the narrative of hate and false threat resulting from manufactured white flight, my family stayed in our house on St. Denis and continued to support and attend our local schools, which taught me more than just book smarts. Federally mandated desegregation programs implemented at public schools created a diversified classroom, providing me with friends of all colors from Kindergarten on. My mind would never know any difference between them and myself, no matter what people would try to tell me when I was older. I couldn't be more thankful.
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