Why? I don't know.

[bigtree]

Last edited Thu Mar 1, 2012, 08:51 AM - Edit history (1)

I was watching a PBS special about school desegregation, and there was a scene where three women who had been the first in their state/town to integrate a public school went back and walked up the hill where there had been a gauntlet of troopers, reporters, and folks yelling epithets and slurs as they walked up to the school back in those awful days.

One of the things which struck me was the point where they had made it up to the school, surprised how long the driveway seemed today; and the one question that was on all of their minds was, 'why?'

Why would folks act that way toward children seeking to learn at the same school as their white counterparts?

The most revealing thing was found in their recollection of how they had eventually succeeded in establishing themselves at the school - the first school year after integration found these 20 or so black kids with this formerly all-white school all to themselves because the majority of the white kids had been pulled out by their parents.

In fact, most of the white parents and legislators who had been invested in segregated public education in their southern state were willing to just shut the entire system down to avoid integrating and sending their children to school with black kids.

Turns out, the following year, most of the white kids were allowed by their parents and the community establishment to come back to the school(s) in overwhelming numbers and the process of integration that we take for granted today was allowed to proceed.

I remember how, in my town in the early 1980's, how employers were already wary about hiring because of a recession, but there seemed to be a lot of lingering racism which was institutionalized in the remaining imbalance in the levels of power and control of businesses and institutions hadn't yet caught up with the population changes. About 4 or five years later, as my own children's generation was graduating from high school with their fully integrated and opportune class, employers opened the floodgates and allowed this educated and motivated community to fill the much needed slots in a rapidly expanding economy.

In many ways we never looked back; never looked back. In about a blink of an eye, the barriers which seemed so impenetrable in the recent past seemed to evaporate overnight as the truths of integration outstripped all of the hype and conjecture about racial relationships which had so gripped our community for decades. It was like that in the past, on a different degree of transformation with the schools and in employment after the passage of equal employment laws and school desegregation efforts. All of the sudden the barriers in folks' minds just fell (for most, it seemed).

At the end of it all, we're just left to wonder -- reflecting on all of the anxiety and angst we'd felt about crossing those artificial barriers to our successes -- just, why? Why did this happen, if it was all so possible to just let it go? Why was all of this perpetrated on a people? Opportunism? Evil? Hysteria?

I don't know.



(bigtree)

[freshwest]

1. IMHO, it was mass psychosis. It freaked me out no end.

[bigtree]

3. I can relate so much to that

. . . it freaking me out. Incomprehensible.

[nofurylike]

2. it perfectly demonstrates that ignorance is the foundation of prejudice

and such hatreds, doesn't it? ignorance that opens the way for the other mentioned weaknesses, such as hysteria, opportunism, and evil (base malignity), to influence people.


great, thought-provoking piece, bigtree, thank you!

[bigtree]

4. all of the above

I think that the leaders were the key to changing the mindset, as well as the practice; the folks who stepped in the way and said, enough. Until those in power and authority stood up and asserted their authority and responsibility under the Constitution, all of those were allowed to flourish unchecked.

“WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

[nofurylike]

5. well put. bigtree. yes, i see it.

were it not for those courageous and dedicated leaders, the "First"s - "first in their state/town to integrate a public school"; those through that floodgate to employment; those first "crossing those artificial barriers to our successes" - would not be empowered to move into previously segregated places, and survive (sometimes survive) doing it.

once integrated, the ignorant finally learn (often unconsciously, usually begrudgingly) that their ignorance has made them puppets of fear and hatred, opportunism and evil.

that is a perfect passage you include from the Constitution!

thank you, again, bigtree!