ORLANDO, Fla. — A boy growing up in Indiana during the height of segregation, Dr. Richard Harris said life for him changed when schools integrated.
What You Need To Know
- A Southeastern University associate professor says being bullied as a child led him down a dark path
- Dr. Richard Smith now shares his story as a lesson in how racism develops from hate, especially at an early age
- He says bullying led him to hate people, and shared hate lures people to hate groups like the KKK
- A Stetson psychology professor says limited support from family and friends can also lead to hate
“I was the only one with glasses. I was that kid that the bullies picked on, on the playground and took the lunch money away from... I was that kid,” said Harris, an associate professor at Southeastern University in Lakeland.
But then “all of a sudden, my formerly all-white elementary school had African American children bused in from the other side of town. This was my turn, and now they are coming on to my turf. The thought occurred to me that maybe I could bully them,” Harris said.
Once a victim of bullying, Harris then became a bully himself.
From that point he said he gained a reputation of being a "very hateful, racist person."
“The fact that I was bullied, that started breeding hate within me, and I just hated anybody who might pick on me at that time," Harris said. "But then as I became a bully, what I noticed within myself — now I am spewing hate, and the more I spewed hate, the more hate tended to grow in my life."
That growing hate led Harris down a deeper path to one of the oldest hate groups in the country.
“I became a full member of the Ku Klux Klan, eventually rising to the position of Grand Dragon of the entire state of Indiana,” Harris said.
According to National Center for Education Statistics, in 2019, slightly more than 20% of students in the U.S. reported being bullied. About 41% of students who reported being bullied said they thought the bulling would keep happening.
But does bullying lead students down the wrong path?
“It can," says Dr. Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University. "It can be one of many things that can breed resentment and hate in people."
Ferguson said that although bullying can foster hate in people, there are other factors that can lead young people astray, such as limited support from family and friends.
“What happens to a lot of those individuals is they don’t have a real good sense of belonging, they don’t fit in with mainstream society, and you may have a variety of organizations, (such as) hate groups, other extreme groups, who offer a sense of belonging,” Ferguson said.
That sense of belonging is what lured Harris to the KKK.
Mary Bridges with Orange County Public Schools says the district has specialists who guide students away from the wrong path.
“We can have small group social skills training so that we teach them how to cope better and how to be more resilient,” Bridges said.
Now, Harris, the Southeastern associate professor, has given up his ties to the KKK and renounced racism. He encourages young people who are experiencing any aspects of bullying to seek help.
“The same schoolyard bullies are still there. Kids, they want power. They want to feel some power; that’s what I did,” Harris said.
Orange County Schools encourages students to let their teachers and parents know if they are being bullied — the district has a zero-tolerance policy.