Could the rest of the world go away for a few days, please?

One of the things you should know about me is that I tend to be - despite the rants I post here - overly idealistic about people. I tend to expect people to behave in ways that are rational, logical, and kind.

And I am frequently disappointed.

And at those times, frankly, I want to gather in the increasingly small number of people who DON'T disappoint me, and figuratively put myself out in front of them (protecting them) and then, figuratively, deliver a huge roundhouse kick to the rest of humanity.

I was talking with friends of mine last night (a couple). They have two sons and have taken in a third boy as a foster son. They had yet another foster son, but they don't have him right now, because of cruelty and idiocy of other people.

The family is very committed to the foster program. The wife was a foster-daughter herself.

I also have to stop here and mention the races of the people involved; it will become important. The couple is white (the woman did spend time fostered in a black family when she was growing up; she speaks fondly of the foster parents in that family). The foster son they have right now is white. The foster son they do not currently have is black.

I also need to remind you that I live in the South. In the rural, backwoodsy South.

You may be able to guess where this is going.

Anyway, the black foster son (let's call him Mike) joined the family. He went to the school where the foster family's kids (lets call them Dave and Tim) were enrolled.

Mike was the only black kid in the school. (It is a small school and a very homogenous community). Well - he got attacked in the halls, kids would jump him and take his books, they'd make allusions to the KKK, they'd call him every ugly name in the book. Mike went to the principal and said he didn't feel safe. The principal didn't do anything. A couple of the redneck hick idiot kids in this school laid in wait for Mike and jumped him one day, with the aim of beating the snot out of him.

And Tim saw it. And Tim - he's not a big guy but he's tough - stepped in and basically said, "You're not doing that to my foster brother." And Tim got in a fight with the awful redneck kids.

And the principal suspended Tim for fighting. The awful redneck kids didn't get punished, at least not as far as I heard. And the principal called the state and told them to take Mike out of the school system.

And so, Mike was removed from the home. The state did tell my friends that if they could move to another town where the school was more welcoming, they could have Mike back.

My friends - the man works as a mechanic, the woman is a part-time social worker. It's not like it would be easy (or even possible) at this point for them to move to an area with more "welcoming" schools. Because, both the towns it would be logical to move to - housing prices are much higher. (And it would mean pulling Dave and Tim from their school - although they seem to think that's no great loss).

Well, my friends asked the caseworker if they could pick Mike up and take him to church with them (Mike had been attending regularly). And they were told no, that's not a good idea, but you can visit him if you want.

Mike is currently living in a shelter.

The kicker? The state told Mike that his foster family was making preparations to move and take him back. When the foster family actually can't afford that and are scrambling to see if there is any way possible they can. But no, the state agency that told them "you can't have him for 2 hours to go to church on Sunday" went and told Mike, "Yes, they will be getting you soon." So Mike's hopes are up and my friends feel duty-bound now to try to do what they can - even if it means going into massive debt or someone taking on a second job - to move, so that the promise the state made to Mike - without their permission - isn't broken.

And this is the kind of thing that makes me want to scream. There's more involved I'm not putting in here. But - it's people trying to do the right thing and help someone, and getting slapped around for it. And if my friends fail - simply because they Do. Not. Have. The. Money. to move to a town where Mike's safety won't be in peril from stupid redneck racist kids, then Mike will doubtless be made to feel like they failed him.

The whole racist kid thing gets me. It's freaking 2006. Mike was a "normal" kid - it wasn't like he came in all gangsta'd out or something. He should have fit in. But because these stupid kids, who probably have stupid parents who teach them that anyone who doesn't look like them - or probably anyone who doesn't come from their sadly inbred little branch of humanity - is bad and wrong and dangerous and needs to be driven away.

Oh yeah, they're calling Tim a N*****-lover now. (I'm not going to type out that word; I don't want anyone overzealously flagging my site).

And it drives me up the wall when I hear people mewling about "institutionalized racism" when what they really mean is that they want different sets of standards for people of different ethnic groups, or they want quotas, or some damn thing, when there are still places in the world where people are actually in danger of being beaten up (or worse; I'd not put it past some of the kids to carry knives to school) because of what they look like.

It reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) story about a women's meeting at the UN, where women from "first world" countries were arguing about "inclusive language" (using "he and she" rather than "he") and a woman from some African nation stood up, quoted them her nation's statistic on infant mortality, and then looked at them and said, "And you are arguing about what pronoun to use?"

(Regardless of how you feel about the UN or outside agencies having to "do something" about problems that may be ingrained in a country). It's like, in some universities people are calling people racist for not using the most "up to date" term for people of color, and yet, in a small school in an outpost of the American south, a black student is getting beat up because of the color of his skin.

(Which is also why committee type things and those sort of university hand-wringing meetings drive me up the wall. There are so many problems out there that you really shouldn't be wasting your time on problems of semantics right now).