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I began teaching 20 years ago at a majority-black public middle school. The behavior of the black students was so outrageous, it bordered on unbelievable. Their respect for authority and teachers was less than nothing. They would pull my hair to see if it was real, sometimes standing around me playing with my hair like animals performing grooming rituals. Other times, they would push their faces into my abdomen, take a deep breath, and comment on the way I smelled. I’ve even had students tell me they could smell my “coochie” and shove their hand between my legs from behind.

Their attempts to get me fired were relentless. Students would rock back and forth in their chairs screeching angry monkey sounds in an attempt to trick me into saying the word “monkey” so they could accuse me of racism and end my career. The same tactic was in play when they said “nigger” over and over again. If I asked them to stop saying “that word,” they would reply “what word?” hoping I would repeat it. Of course, they had no real issue with profanity. One of their strategies to break the morale of teachers was to leave little pieces of paper all around the room with only the word “bitch” written on them.

Violence was constant as well. I could list dozens if not hundreds of fights and random acts of brutality. Here are just a few.

Once, a new Haitian student who spoke no English was lured into an unmonitored hallway by three American blacks who then beat her unconscious. They slammed her head against a concrete stairwell repeatedly, fracturing her skull and one of her eye sockets, leaving her with partial, but permanent, vision loss.

Another time, a black girl picked up a chair and swung it into her black friend’s head simply because she “wanted to know what it felt like” to do so.

Perhaps worst of all was the time I saw a group of blacks drag a small white boy into a storage closet, with scissors at his throat the whole time. I nearly lost my job because I used a curse word in order to gain control of the situation, while the scissor-wielding thugs faced no consequences whatsoever. Although the administration was unhappy with my behavior that day, it impressed my students. My quick intervention and harsh language was met with cheers and applause because it was so striking to see a white teacher act so fiercely and decisively. Some students commented that what I had done to save the white boy was “so ghetto,” because I managed to be the dominant figure in the situation. On this occasion, they meant “ghetto” as a compliment. It doesn’t always carry a good connotation, though — the bastardization of my ancestors’ language is fluid.

The victimization of whites by blacks is especially bad in middle schools because black children reach puberty earlier than their white peers, and are therefore much larger. Prepubescent white children generally adopt one or more of these three survival strategies:

Remain small, invisible, and compliant. Try not to speak or be seen. This works fairly well as long as they are willing to periodically do classwork for blacks and not quibble when blacks “repossess” their property. Surrendering candy, sparkly pencils, fidget spinners, and the like are all common ways of paying the informal “white tax” that blacks enforce.

Adopt ebonics and behave in a desperate and exaggerated ghetto style to try to and fit in.

Deny their whiteness. Regularly find ways of announcing that they aren’t really white because they are Italian, or Jewish, or Spanish, or anything else that could possibly be construed as non-white.

These strategies do help, but not that much. In the end, all white students are made to suffer by their non-white counterparts — especially the small and quiet ones.

My proudest accomplishment was helping Michael, an upper-middle-class white boy, escape that middle school. He was only there in the first place because his family had recently moved to the area and enrolled him in the local public school without realizing what that would entail for their son. He was a model student. Every day he would sit quietly doing his assignments, periodically sighing as the rest of the class fought, bickered, yelled, cussed, vandalized, and cat-called one another. One day, I sat down next to him and told him: “Go home and tell your parents to put you in private school, you don’t belong here.” His parents did so almost immediately — I’m so grateful they listened to me and had enough money to do something about it.

Looking back over my career as a teacher, the most striking change I have seen is the demographic one. The high school I teach at now used to be predominantly black, with small numbers of the other races. Now it is only about half black, with a swelling Hispanic population. As I sit at my desk reviewing student data, I see that one of my Latin American students has turned twenty. Carlos is a full grown man, but he is attending public school as a tenth grader to evade immigration enforcement. His presence is welcomed and even celebrated by the school administration and sanctioned by district officials in this large sanctuary city inside a sanctuary state. This high school is fairly large — with over 2,000 students — and there are two others about as big nearby, meaning that Carlos is not the only illegal alien taking advantage of the fact that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not raid schools.

Roughly 40 percent of the student population is now composed of “English language learners.” Many of these students are illegals who seem to have been bussed in by some sort of underground network. Most of them arrived in the past two years. Their families receive city services such as welfare, food stamps, and Section 8 Housing. At school, they get free breakfast and lunch and are given backpacks filled with food to take home over the weekend, along with “reproductive services,” psychologists, social workers, and specialized teachers to help them learn in their own language — all free of charge. The adults — parents or otherwise — get free evening classes in the same school to teach them English and how to find resources within the community.

In return for the generosity of the community, the school now has Hispanic students lining the halls making out — and sometimes doing much more than that. The girls all want to get pregnant, and their culture cheers them on, regardless of their age or marital status. The boys carry knives and sell drugs, the stench of marijuana is ever-present in the hallways — which is where Hispanic students spend most of their time, as opposed to the classrooms they should be seated in. They refuse to speak English, claiming not to understand when told to go to class, and cussing out teachers in Spanish whenever they feel like it. Some even try to threaten teachers to get passing grades, making comments such as, “Do you like your car? I need an A.”

Other students rarely attend school but stay formally enrolled so they can be considered “DREAMers.” Their presence on the roster keeps other pupils from enrolling in a class they may need in order to graduate. Plenty of students openly state that they are only in school to get money and benefits, and to eventually take back the country that white people stole from them. Unsurprisingly, all but a few refuse to stand for the pledge of allegiance.

Ahmaud Arbery: The Next Trayvon Martin?

Get ready for another massive national convulsion over race. It will be just like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray. This time, the dead black man is Ahmaud Arbery, age 25. The whites who shot him are Gregory McMichael, age 64, and his son, Travis McMichael, 34.

There is no presumption of innocence. Joe Biden tweeted that “Ahmaud Arbery was killed in cold blood.” Elizabeth Warren says that what happened is “sickening.” Ilhan Omar is quite sure that Arbery “was lynched. Killed in cold blood simply for being a Black man in America.” Kamala Harris tweeted that the killing “sickens me to my core.” The president of the Georgia NAACP says, “The modern-day lynching of Mr. Arbery is yet another reminder of the vile and wicked racism that persists in parts of our country.” Even National Review just ran an article called, “The Murder of Ahmaud Arbery.”

The two white men’s addresses are now splashed across the internet and, as this lad notes, “Street gets its revenge always. This guy and his son gone be dead soon enough. And I’ll gladly praise that day.”

So, what happened? Unlike previous celebrated “modern lynchings,” at least some of the police findings are public. Their lives may be ruined, but there is good reason to think that what Gregory and Travis McMichael did was perfectly legal.

The father, Gregory McMichael, is a former police officer and investigator for the district attorney. He lived close to a new building under construction where there had been break-ins and trespassing. Mr. McMichael had reportedly seen surveillance video of a black man trespassing. He says that on February 23, he saw a black man — who turned out to be Arbery — “hauling ass” down the street, and thought he looked like the man in the video. He and his son armed themselves and followed in a pickup truck, hoping to hold him until the police came. A friend named Bryan William followed in a second vehicle and took cellphone video. The McMichaels drove ahead of Arbery and stopped in the street.

What happened next is on this short video, and is consistent with what the McMichaels told police. They shouted at Arbery to stop because they wanted to talk to him. They say Arbery ran around the pickup and attacked Travis, the younger McMichael, who was holding a shotgun. There were three shotgun blasts as Travis and Arbery struggled for the weapon, and Arbery died at the scene.

The video recently became public, and proves that people can see the same images and see things that are completely different. George Barnhill, a Georgia DA who investigated the killing, has written a public letter summarizing his findings. He wrote that the three white men “were following, in ‘hot pursuit’, a burglary suspect, with solid first hand probable cause, in their neighborhood, and asking/telling him to stop. . . . to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived.” He added, “Under Georgia Law this is perfectly legal.” He also noted that the McMichaels were legally armed. There may be other reasons besides the surveillance video to think the McMichaels had “first-hand probable cause,” but details are not yet available.

Mr. Barnhill, whose investigation included an autopsy report, reconstructed the struggle between Travel McMichael and Arbery as follows:

The 1st shot is through Arbery’s right hand palm which is consistent with him grabbing and pulling the shotgun at the barrel tip, the 2nd and 3rd wounds are consistent with the struggle for the shotgun as depicted in the video . . . . Given the fact Arbery initiated the fight, at the point Arbery grabbed the shotgun, under Georgia Law, McMichael was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself. Just as importantly, while we know McMichael had his finger on the trigger, we do not know who caused the firings. Arbery would only had to pull the shotgun approximately 1/16th to 1/8th of one inch to fire the weapon himself and in the height of an altercation this is entirely possible. Arbery’s mental health records & prior convictions help explain his apparent aggressive nature and his possible thought pattern to attack an armed man.

Arbery appears to have had a shoplifting conviction and to have brought a gun to a school illegally and resisted arrest, but it’s not clear what Mr. Barnhill meant by “mental health records.” The DA concluded that he saw no reason to arrest the men, adding that it would be up to a grand jury to hand down an indictment.

A black lawyer named Lee Merritt, who is representing the Arbery family, watched the same video and reached a different conclusion: “Mr. Arbery was pursued by three white men that targeted him solely because of his race and murdered him without justification. . . . [T]hese men must be taken into custody pending their indictment.”

DA Barnhill has recused himself from the investigation because of previous law-enforcement work with Gregory McMichael. The outside prosecutor now assigned to the case, Tom Durden, says he will take the case to the grand jury as soon as the Georgia courts end their virus shutdown. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation will also investigate.

What will happen next? Let us not forget that blacks rioted in Ferguson, Missouri, when a grand jury refused to indict the white officer, Darren Wilson, who shot Michael Brown. I think therefore it is a near certainly that Gregory and Travis McMichael will be charged with murder. They can’t risk a plea bargain because in a superheated case like this, even admitting to involuntary manslaughter will mean years in jail.

A trial could be as sensational as the Trayvon Martin case — and could turn out the same. To get a conviction, the prosecutor will have to prove guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Based on the facts as they appear now — and under current Georgia law — that may not be easy. There could be another spectacular acquittal that brings howls of fury and dismay.

Whatever happens, there are many ironies here. First, all the people who are calling this a “lynching” and are screaming for punishment are, themselves, acting like a lynch mob. As now-recused DA Barnhill wrote to journalists, “People need to let the American criminal justice system work. After it is completed all of the facts and evidence will be available for the public to review.” There is no chance of that.

Second, people who hate white people — and especially white police — will trumpet this as yet another example of “open season on black men,” as if white police officers and private citizens are on the prowl for innocent black men to shoot. This is foolishness, but the media — as they are in this case — promote it tirelessly. It takes an inquiring mind to discover that a black person is nearly 30 times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa, and that police killings of blacks account for about 0.6 percent of all homicides of blacks, justified or not. Recent studies find that white officers are no more likely than black officers to shoot black suspects.

Ahmaud Arbery probably didn’t know these facts. All this reckless talk of “open season” could very well have convinced him that he would be shot no matter what he did. Instead of stopping to talk, he appears to have charged a man with a shotgun. He would surely be alive today if he had not attacked.

But the facts don’t matter; all that matters is a chance to accuse whites of racism, and many whites get just as wild a thrill out of this as blacks.

Third, Gregory and Travis McMichael have just learned what “white privilege” means. It is only because they are white and the dead man is black that the whole world knows their names. I suspect that most of the people who see this video as proof of first-degree murder would see it as justifiable self defense if this were not one of those rare acts of white-on-black violence that we are supposed to think are so common.

A society that promotes the notion of “white privilege” is admitting the opposite: Whites will always be scrutinized for “racism,” will never get the benefit of the doubt, will always be assumed guilty, and will always be held to higher and even impossible standards.

Controversies like this are inevitable when whites and blacks try to live together. Life in a multiracial society is always full of tension and conflict. In “white supremacist” America, “white privilege” means contempt and persecution. And it will get only worse.