I went to school with a traveller, primary school this was, Victor his name was. Victor lived on a permanent travellers site just out of town, its still there now. Bullied terribly the poor lad, wish I knew then what I know now and could have done something about it.
Anyhow, the question of course is why was he bullied? He wasn't particulary different to the rest of us, a little scruffy maybe, but nothing out of the ordinary, his behaviour was no different to any of us other 9 year olds. Except of course, Victor wasn't a bully and did not come from the leafy modern middle class housing estate where the rest of us lived. The reason Victor was bullied was of course due to prejudice. Nine year olds are not born with prejudice. Prejudice is taught to us, maybe even inadvertently by our elders. The same elders that to this day write stuff on internet forums which judge a whole subset minority of people based on a single experience of the few... Victor is quite likely to be quite an angry adult by now, and who could blame him?
.. and you wonder why they behave like they do?
Bullying of minorities was across the board in those days. When the blacks started to organise and some good people,within the majority population stepped in, they picked on other minority races who were less organised.They also picked on the meek and vulnerable within our World.
What was interesting in school was when bullies and bigots did their nonsense, their school mates realised that they picked up such behaviour from their parents. We were all curious to see who their parents were.