Every year I use this day to reflect how far we’ve come from Dr. King’s vision for American Race Relations.
I thought maybe I’d give it a rest, since it’s really depressing, as it is white folks like myself who talk about it, and the minorities who either ignore it, or actively work to make it worse.
Then I heard and interview on the Radio talking about Busing in Massachusetts. For those not familiar with the term, Massachusetts is an alarmingly segregated state, it isn’t even as granular as “Suburbs are mostly white, and Urban areas are mostly Minority”, it’s Lilly-white Suburbs (my town is WHITER than the State of Maine and Vermont COMBINED!) and heavily minority populated NEIGHBORHOODS of Urban areas, right beside Lilly White neighborhoods in the EXACT same city. In places like Boston you can cross a street and the color of the people out walking around changes RADICALLY. Now Busing is taking students from minority schools (which as a rule are crime-filled, and under-performing, despite massive school budgets) and having them ride the school bus to a mostly white school where they can actually get an education.
For those bussed out of their own neighborhoods, it’s generally been considered a success. Still in this interview the guest started talking about going further, and having suburban boarding schools where kids essentially left their neighborhoods for all but a few weeks out of the year (he said weeks, not Months, which makes me wonder if he also wants year-round schooling). He did tip his hat a little by talking about how wonderful Deval Patrick is, and claiming his success on him getting out of Chicago. I’m not impressed with Patrick, but I will concede that while I’m not a fan of his accolades he’s done a LOT better than most blacks from Chicago.
Still even tho some of this guy’s points made me uncomfortable, I don’t think we need more wards of the state, and I don’t like the idea of kids essentially growing up without their family in a school where most likely most of the other are similar students from poor neighborhoods who are isolated from their families. I can’t say that such a practice would be devastating to the students.
We live in a world where any street named after Dr. King will have more police calls than streets miles away, and any school that bears his name will have horrible academic performance, crime, and teen pregnancy. The solution this guy essentially had to help black kids in America is to take them away from their families and surround them with white kids and adults.
That really depresses me to write after listening to that great speech above….
Something NEEDS to be done, but who is going to do it? I’ll leave you with these two items:
A tongue-in-cheek rip at race-baiting politicians, and then this:
What a mess we have, Sorry Dr. King, you tried so hard.
