Apartheid. USA 1988

June 14, 1987:

Added security was ordered after what police called the worst episode of racial violence all year in the city's 973 schools - speaking about the rampage at South Shore High in Brooklyn. As many as 80 blacks went on a rampage of random attacks, smashing the headlights and windshield of a van, attacking a black student and four whites with baseball bats, stealing gold chains from three victims and slashing a police officer who attempted to arrest one youth. A 17-year-old black student who asked to be called GF told of a white gang in the school that he said was known as the ‘Sicilianos’ and that intimidated blacks and other minorities and sometimes engaged in drug sales. He said the reported fight began over a drugs dispute. ‘It was a matter of money between the Sicilianos and a black kid,’ he said. ‘It began as one-on-one, with a Siciliano trying to collect money from a narcotics deal. The black kid's friends stood up for him. The Sicilianos attacked and took it out on everybody around there.’ Asked why no whites had been arrested, he said, ‘The white kids always get away. It was covered up as a robbery.’ Asked why no students had identified the whites involved, he said: ‘You mind your own business around here or you get hit.’ A white student (16), who said his name was John and that he was an immigrant from Israel, said the Sicilianos ‘rule the school’. They use a Burger King across Flatbush Avenue as their hangout. ‘Blacks can't say anything in the school if they don't want to get it,’ he said. ‘The Italians are too powerful.’

A black 10th grader who lives in the Glenwood Houses city project which is predominantly black, but also has a large

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number of white residents, said: ‘There are boundaries around here. The white kids don't run through the projects at night, and we don't go into their areas.’^114.

114. The New York Times