Jed,
I asked a question "why" as an entree to granting you the last word. I did
not use the word " black" to be clever, but for a reason. The proper
descriptive term is negroid, not "black". The word black is not descriptive
of a race just as African is not descriptive of a race. You are mixing race
with culture. Some Pacific islanders may be of the negroid race , yet have a
totally distinct culture from an African nation. Latin America has a large
negroid population yet they have a Hispanic culture and language
In the USA it is common to categorize various cultures using " slang " words
such as " redneck", etc. Some slang words are extremely offensive and
politically incorrect when uttered by someone from another race, yet, within
their racial culture, the term is in common used ,even in their music.
As for education, it has now been 40 years and counting since the great
social experiment began. You were in favor of the experiment while I was
not. Without getting into a litany of claims of the good the experiment has
produced for a few fortunates, it is only necessary to recognize its utter
failure.
The one's that promoted the experiment cried '' we must do something,
even if it's wrong". The public school system is become a shambles
regardless of how much money is " thrown" at it.
The proper attitude and thinking of government should have been " lets do
it, lets do it right , we have had 200 years to get it right, we have the
brains, the money and the desire". Lets don't do it wrong just for the sake
of "doing something"
You heap me into the "angry mob group". I prefer to be classified as the
parent of 4 children that came home from grade school in the late 60' and
70's describing " how things were going at school" .We could have placed
them in private schools at that time but we wanted them to experience the
reality of what happens when cultures clash at a base level of society.
Richard
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jed Rothwell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2005 9:31 PM
Subject: Re: Way-OT: Mo' de king's English
RC Macaulay wrote:
"Jed..
I didn't use the word black.. you did."
Oh how clever of you. You talked about "school integration in the 1960s"
but you did not mean black kids. You meant Martians. Martians "will drag
you down to their level."
Let me remind you, and the readers here, what happened in 1962, and what
this is all about. I was just a kid but I lived through it, my friends
here in Atlanta lived through it, and we shall not forget. I mentioned the
class valedictorian in my daughter's class. My daughter is no academic
slouch. She graduated with honors from Cornell, but this kid ran rings
around her, and so did many of the other black kids. Now what would have
happened to that child if he had tried to go to our Atlanta neighborhood
school in 1962? The law would have prevented him. He would have been
forced to attend segregated schools, some of which were only open a
half-day, because there was not enough room in the building for all the
children. All of them were funded at a fraction of the level of the white
schools. If his parents had defied the law, and tried to register him
here, mobs of angry of people would have come out, and they would have
tried to beat him to death.
And who were these angry mobs? They were people like RC Macaulay, who
vowed they would not be "dragged down" by integration. "Segregation now,
and forever." No black kid from Atlanta, no matter how brilliant, would
have made it to Harvard back then. He probably would not have made it to
college. Now we send thousands to the best schools in the country.
That's what we are talking about. I am not exaggerating one tiny bit. You
can read the history of the Atlanta schools anytime you like. We talk
about injustice as it were in the distant past, or as if it was some
abstract quality, that affected everyone on average perhaps, but only a
little. "After all, how inconvenient was it to use a separate water
fountain?" as one white woman put it not long ago. As if water fountains
were the only issue. What these laws and customs did was to ruin the lives
of millions of people right here in Atlanta. They cut off the creativity
and potential of these people, depriving society of their contributions.
Thousands and thousands of potential valedictorian chess champions and
Nobel laureates ended up digging ditches all their lives. Many of them are
still doing it -- still middle aged, their lives still blighted.
This was a monsterous injustice, and it was all the fault of people like
you who opposed integration, and who oppose it still. And you have the
gall to blame the victims!
- Jed
