Beliefs:
There are many beliefs that come out of the article “Fight at Auburn High” .  The main belief is about Racism;

Racism:
This whole article is based around the issue or racism in the town of Cole Harbour.  The whole thing was said to be set off by an article that was written by parents of black students that go to Auburn Drive, saying that their children were being treated with predigest in the classroom.  This was not where all the beliefs on racism started though; to see that we have to look deeper into the history of the town/area and the history of the school.
In Cole Harbour the blacks have never really associated with the whites.  They live in separate community’s and only associated when they went to school.  It is as if they have two totally different communities in one town.  This can make for a lot of racial tension in the schools.  Things have been this way for a long time now.  It’s not just this generation, this problem goes all the way back to the 1800's to after the war when slavery was abolished.  It is not something that is going to be fixed over night because it has been going on for so long.  It is going to take a long time for people to change, but there is hope because it's starting now.
The whole racial tension in Auburn Drive High started even before the school was built.  Cole Harbour high, located just down the road, had the exact same problems.  On one account the school was closed for a whole week because the racial tension was so high.  The community at that point sat down and tried to do something about it.  They held a meeting for parents and another for the students to try to encourage racial harmony.   One of the reasons they felt the racial tension was so high was because of the over crowding of the school.  That is when they built Auburn Drive high, which didn’t make it better but just moved the problem to a different location.
The only way that the racial tension is going to stop is for the beliefs and values of the community to change.  For blacks to try to see the world though the eyes of the whites, for whites to see the world through the eyes of the blacks and for both to accept that both cultures are a great deal of the community’s history.  Racism is a thing that will be around for a long time because people have their beliefs and are not willing to change.
 

But there are many other more important beliefs that we have explored through out our time working with the piece.  Tradition, Organization and Conduct are three of the many other beliefs in this article that our group felt were the most important and therefore have chosen to explore.

Tridition:
History has helped racism a great deal to continue. In the past when many Black people came to Canada after the war of
1812, they were seen as failures; they could not farm, or hunt well and they were also very disorganized  This is shown at the followingsite. This general view about these people was carried on from generation to generation. Along with this belief came the poor treatment, they were discriminated against because they were poor, uneducated and worst of all Black. For this they were treated as inferiors, after all Black people were kept as slaves to do all the dirty and dangerous jobs that the White
people did not want to do.
This belief has been passed on from generation to generation until present day, where we see the results of years of tension. Now in places like Cole Harbor, you see it very clearly, among the towns, where Preston is mainly Black  people and Colby Village in were the White's live. This shows how our racism has divided towns and people.
Also, from our community we come, we make our homes there, we are the community. Whatever the majority of the
individuals in the community believe, it seems that it is passed on to those who either do not know what to believe or do not feel this way. They then to are influenced to believe in the same things. Not only is it passed on through the community it is also passed on to our children, the net generation. These children then take these beliefs to school and there they are acted out, in name calling and fights.
For some people it is not against the person but against what he/she is, BLACK. In the past, Black people were
slaves, did not go to school, and did not interact with the White people. Trying to adjust to this "new" way seems not
to be in the cards for some people. Also, the White people seem to feel better than the Blacks who are poorer than the
poorest of the poor White's. It seems like because the Black people were slaves, were uneducated and were poor, the White
people, who are so prejudice, think that this is how it should stay.
I remember one thing that was said to a Black person in which really bugs me. A white person, told this Black person
to go back to Africa. All I could think was that most of the Black people who are here, are here because the white man
brought them over to sell for slaves. To me it seems we as white people are the problem, we were happy enough to have
black people here to be our slaves, but when their lives are worth just as much as ours, when we are considered "equal"
as humans, we do not want anything to do wit them. After saying this I ask who are the real bad guys here
 

Organizations:
 Schools always have different groups of people despite race. Groups of students hang out with each other because of similar
characteristics, for example "jocks" hang out together because they share a similar interest in sports. Other groups might be
"skaters," "preps," "and "greasers"and so on. It seems at Auburn High that the students are separated into race groups; the
white students sit on one side of the cafeteria and the black students sit on the other side. There is some intertwining of these
groups from one side to the other but clearly not enough to end the race problem between the other students. Some ideas that
might help make people more aware of racism can be seen here.
There has always been conflict between different organizations so maybe the fight at Auburn High wasn't based specifically on
race. In the article one white student said the fight was not about white students against black students but rich students against
poor students. It seems that the fight happened because of prejudices that the two organizations held against each other.

Conduct:
Life is like a piece of music being played by the whole world.  Every once and a while we as people, organizations and communities get to stand up and conduct that music; show it where to go or move it in some direction.  Weather we do this in the right fashion or the wrong is up to us.
The way in which people conduct themselves can provoke things to happen.  There are fights that go on everyday in every school, whether it be a junior high or high school, there are always fights. The fight all started when one girl called another a “black bitch”, but who where the ones fighting?  If it had of all been about race why didn’t the fight brake out between those two girls, when the girl said the things to her and why weren’t the girls fighting?  The whole big insolent started in the boy’s washroom.  How does a racial fight that started with girl’s end up in the boys washroom?  It’s not just about race it’s about the way in which people conducted themselves.  If that girl had never said what she said then there still could have been a fight.  For all we know it was two boy’s who disagreed upon something and could find no other way to work things out but by fighting.  We assume that it was because of what was going on, we are never really told why the fight really started, and I'm not sure if anyone really knows.
The way in which the students conducted themselves the day of the fight was no different then the every day high school fight.  It started off as a quarrel between two people, one person threw a punch and the other retaliated.  The crowds grew and more people stepped in.  This doesn’t sound anything like a racist fight, it sound like any ordinary fight in any school yard.  Yet because it was two races involved they assume that it started because of racial differences.  If there hadn’t been two races there wouldn’t have been any mention of it but because there was two races there is a big thing about it.  For all they knew it could have been two friends fighting.
That’s not the way the people involved tell the story, but why when two races are involved do we automatically assume that is it has to do with racism?  We make a big deal of when blacks are fighting whites but not any other races against each other, why is that?  Are we blowing things out of proportion, calling childish school yard fights racism?  Or are we trying to stop the problems of tomorrow today?