A liberal is a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet.

Most of my friends growing up were very open minded of different races and cultures, even here in the south. We ignored our parents racism because they weren't "blacks" or "illegals" to us, they were just our friends. We've played together since we were in the sandbox. Unfortunately, things changed as we got older. They segregated themselves by who they chose to sit down next to at lunch or pair up with in class. Many of our black friends started behaving, for lack of a better word, like thugs right around middle school. It wasn't all of them but it was enough to be an obvious pattern. More often than not it was a black kid who bullied you or stole your stuff. This was a behavior they adopted. Sometimes it was outright dangerous being around kids who might have been your friends just a few years earlier. Black kids were regularly caught with weapons, got in fights frequently and disrespected the learning environment including talking back to and sometimes physically attacking teachers and staff. I remember a kid that wouldn't be quiet in class one day was asked to leave so he picked up his chair and threw it at the teacher. Stuff like this happened all the time. I knew people that were in the hallway when a one of them shot at another student for "disrespecting" him. As a rational person, when you grow up in an environment where a group of people cause you fear and harm, it's only makes sense to want to avoid those people and be cautious of them. If you're around it long enough you might even hate those people. You know it's not all of them but it's better to be safe than risk becoming another victim. I don't know why things turned out this way. Our area was an upper-middle class suburban community. These kids lived in nice homes like the rest of us. I think it's just a cultural thing. They feel like being black means adopting this thug persona. The rest of us did stupid things as teens too but we weren't violent like the black kids. These were the most formidable years in our lives. We formed our world view during this time. We weren't racist until we lived in an environment that turned us racist. Don't blame a flag, a song or our parents for our world view. Blame the kids that used to be our friends until they decided they'd rather terrorize us. Blame a culture that doesn't value intelligence, peace or progress. Blame humanity itself. But understand that we were molded in to this place by thousands of daily interactions with people across our entire lives. Our opinion are just as valid as anybodies. I consider myself very much a liberal but I also understand that the world isn't a perfect place. Sometimes you have to live with the world you've been given and I can't ignore the facts just to suit my personal opinions. The facts are blacks are more likely to commit serious violent crime such as murders and rapes. Those are statistical facts. You could even compare it on the national level by looking at countries in Europe or east Asia vs Africa or the Caribbean islands (e.g. Haiti or Jamaica).