Dear Larry: Recently, the second-largest school district in North Carolina, the Wake County Public School System, decided to forgo its busing policy. Instead, the school board opted to establish "community-based schools."
Because North Carolina is a part of the South and the district is large, this decision could have negative consequences in terms of socio-economic and cultural segregation.
The NAACP has been involved; students have protested; and community members are vocally outraged, all to no avail. I do understand that the school board that made this decision was voted in by the majority and therefore has acted on the majority's behalf. However, don't you think that the vocalization of the public since the decision also speaks for itself?
Also, I am interested to hear your take on a Southern school board's choice to end busing, because you have stated that you believe that our country has come so far and that a person's race no longer dictates his or her potential to succeed.
What happens when the North or the West starts to revert back to 1950s practices? Are you still convinced that everyone has the same ability? — Alicia
Dear Alicia: Let me reveal something about myself. When it comes to this issue, I am biased.
I was elected and served for 13 years on an urban public school board with a very high percentage of minorities. I ran on a platform that we needed our own district to be more concerned about educating our children at home than busing them all over creation and obfuscating a problem.
This country has experienced a social revolution. We are nothing like what we were before the civil rights movement. Things have changed, especially in the South. It is time to move forward and stop generalizing.
This country has been busing our children for approximately 50 years with mixed results.
How long do we want to continue this practice? As you stated, the majority has voted to end this practice. I am a believer in the ballot process. People have a right to choose. If their choice does not work, the courts are ready and available to change things.
I am a believer in community-based public schools and think we should expend the necessary effort to educate our children where they live. For those who think this will not work, let them have vouchers so they can take their children to any school they feel will give them quality educations. If the school or school district cannot attract enough students, it should compete or go out of business.
Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton thought the Washington, D.C., school system was not good enough for their children, so they put them in private schools. President Jimmy Carter had a different opinion and used the public system. Whatever the parents decide, children should be given the same opportunity for an education as the "rich and famous."
Dear Larry: I want to respond to the column about the bumper sticker that read, "We turn White Trash into Colored People," advertising a tattoo parlor.
I'm 67, old enough to know that "colored people" once meant "African-Americans" and that "white trash" meant "low-class Euro-Americans." I think the use of both terms was meant to draw startled attention and to make fun of how some people stereotype and modern "with-it" people are proud to be either or both.
Even at my age, I immediately read "colored" as really being about colors, not people. This sticker was nothing more than a pun. You should not be offended. Did you miss the pun in the bumper sticker? — Marian
Dear Marian: I understood the pun. I hope you understand how some people could take offense.
To find out more about Larry G. Meeks and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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I agree with Larry once again. It's time to end busing, especially in a district where the public has directly cast ballots to do so. The protests seen since then mean little, and the only poll that counts is the one taken on Election Day. As to vouchers, the teachers' unions are powerful and have successfully lobbied to prevent this from being implemented meaningfully at either the state or federal level. Curbing the power of these unions and returning control to the local level would help a lot, frankly. Some people have also pointed out that if private schools began receiving public funds, regulation would follow (perhaps rightfully so) and it wouldn't be more than a few years before public and private schools were indistinguishable from each other. Right now, the private schools can pick and choose which students they want to accept, and they also have a much easier time ejecting any students who under-perform academically or have behavioral problems. They also have much greater flexibility with the curriculum and can include religious components if they wish. None of that is true of public schools. It is said that not everyone can access the higher-quality education found at private institutions, but I don't see any easy answers to that problem. The issues raised here have less to do with race, and more to do with asking what's best for individual districts. It's a mistake to think that any particular district, in any part of the country, is going to magically revert to 1950's attitudes just because busing has ended.
Comment: #1
Posted by: Matt
Fri Aug 6, 2010 10:19 PM
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This is in reaction to your previous article in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin titled " Blacks quick to call others racist" I have discovered that blacks are just as racist towards whites as whites are toward blacks. If you fail to agree with blacks you are a racist, if you did not vote for Obama you are a racist The fact that whites do have the skin heads , Aryan Nation and other racist groups that promote racial hated but what about the black groups that promote hatred towards whites and non blacks? Lets start with the NEW Black Panther Party who was interviewed by Glen Beck and talked about " Killing Cracker Babies" Lets talk about the Nation of Islam, one of the most RACIST groups on the planet.
Everything is whiteys fault including slavery and the last time I checked , slavery happened 200 years before I was born so why do I owe reparations to anyone?? If something does not go towards the blacks way they whip out the old " Race Card" and play the race game.
Lets face it blacks are as racist towards whites as whites are towards blacks if not more. IF they would get the chip off their shoulder and get a job and be productive and quit worrying about reparations and slavery that happened 200 years ago and had no affect on their life they would be much better off.
A doubt that you will even bother to print this because I am white and present this from a white perspective
Comment: #2
Posted by: Mike
Sat Aug 7, 2010 3:52 PM
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FIfty years ago, in my school district, they bused the white kids past the black school. The white boys used to hang their rear ends out the window and yell the n-word as they passed the black school. The bus driver thought it was funny.
The real issue here is trying to get kids of all colors into good schools. Busing in the 1970s was a ham-handed attempt to accomplish that under the mistaken belief that richer white districts would start funding poorer black districts if white kids were attending black schools.
Busing failed because it didn't address the real problem, which is "community based schools" or, more precisely, funding public schools from local property taxes. Such funding leaves poor people (primarily black urban and white rural) at an incredible disadvantage.
BTW, Mike's letter was hilarious, especially the part about "blacks should get a job" and the idea that the website can tell his skin color when he's entering a comment. The guy probably talks back to the television and thinks the people hear him.
Comment: #3
Posted by: Geoffrey James
Sun Aug 8, 2010 8:25 AM
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Re: Geoffrey James: Mike tried to share his Cheez Doodles with Rush Limbaugh once and was disappointed when the TV screen just got all greasy and orange.
It never ceases to amaze me when people lump together "blacks," "whites," "Christians," "Jews," "Muslims," "liberals," "conservatives," "homosexuals," "heterosexuals," et al., as if all the members of any given group think and behave as a single cohesive unit. Always a clue that the bloviator in question has no real experience with members of the particular group.
Comment: #4
Posted by: Van Wickle
Sun Aug 8, 2010 10:06 AM
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Re: Van Wickle I think this is true, and on a bigger scale than you suggest. A fundamental mistake that people make when grouping people is assigning them to a particular "kind". This is due to a limitation of the person doing the grouping, and not the individual being grouped. This is why people are having trouble figuring out members of the Tea Party. It is a group of people who do not want to be grouped. This is a nation of individuals, of families, of neighborhoods, of ethnic backgrounds, and even a nation of states. But it is a self-selected group each time, and if someone else forces us to some arbitrary group, we resist it. And I mean the word "we" as "we the people".
Comment: #5
Posted by: FFoster
Sun Aug 8, 2010 3:03 PM
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Somebody should also tell Mike that slavery was not made illegal in all 50 of the United States until the 1950s. While it's true that the 13th amendment made slavery unconstitutional and invalidated laws that instituted slavery under law, it took separate legislation to make slavery itself illegal. Slavery of blacks to white owners continued for decades afterward as part of the southern prison system.
Blacks would be arrested for fake crimes (like vagrancy) and forced to sign papers that held them as indentured workers until they had paid off the person who had paid their "fine." Then they'd be charged room and board for living in subhuman conditions while doing dangerous work. Tens of thousands of black men died as the result of such treatment; there are entire graveyards full of the corpses next to white-owned factories, farms, and mines throughout the south.
This was still going on well within the lifetime of people who are alive today. The last prison factories of this type were still operating when I was a boy in the south. Unfortunately, this side of history is the side that never makes it into the high school civics books, which gloss over anything that happened in the United States that isn't immediately inspirational.
But Mike, of course, doesn't know anything about this. What he knows is that blacks are shiftless and lazy and don't want to work for a living. And, of course, he's also certain that he's not a racist. Ironic, eh?
I have to wonder how Weeks feels when he realizes (as surely he must) that his views often provide "proof" for white racists like Mike. I doubt if it bothers him all that much, since his career is built upon catering to whites who want to believe that it's OK to hold blacks in contempt because 1) they're not republicans and 2) they don't all agree with Larry Weeks.
Comment: #6
Posted by: Geoffrey James
Sun Aug 8, 2010 6:35 PM
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Re: FFoster: I think human beings are -- unfortunately -- hard-wired to think in terms of "us" and "them." And the greater extremes we take this to, the more damaging it is for everyone.
Comment: #7
Posted by: Van Wickle
Tue Aug 10, 2010 12:11 PM
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