(Written 10 March 1999. Published in the Neighborhood Journal. Posted 28 July 2006.)
I read an interesting quote the
other day by a student from California who visited Little Rock's Central High
School. When asked about his visit,
this student said that he was awe-inspired by being able to walk the hallowed
steps of Central High.
Now I have walked the steps of
Central High. I've been tired, and I've
been out-of-breath (there are lots of steps), but I've never been
awe-inspired. And I don't really think
I should be, either. When things are
put into the big picture, what happened at Central High did not really have
much of a lasting impact on anything.
Furthermore, the events that occurred throughout 1957 at Central were
repeated elsewhere throughout the nation.
Can anyone say, "The University of Alabama", for example? (I knew you could!) Yet, the University of Alabama hasn't been
turned into hallowed ground.
Central is a fine example of
feel-good history, politically correct history. We don't want to acknowledge the truth, that the events at
Central, for all practical purposes, accomplished nothing, so we gloss over the
facts with this veneer of myth. It is
painful to accept that the civil rights struggles fought so valiantly in the
1950s and 1960s were really for naught.
Sure, segregation is no longer legal, but it still exists in a different
form, by choice. If you don't believe
me, just take a good hard look at the world around you.
One thing that I have noticed, for
example, is that in the schools the white kids hang with the white kids, and
the black kids hang with the black kids.
Segregation by choice. Is this
bad? Not necessarily. We all want to be with others who are like
us.
That is, of course, assuming that
you have a school district that has a mixed population. Many school districts do not. Have you ever noticed how the inner city
school districts tend to be predominately black and the suburban school
districts tend to be practically all-white?
Why is that? Some have dubbed
the phenomenon "white-flight", but the fact remains that many white
folks are moving out of the cities to get away from the black folks. The net result, then, is an educational
segregation of the races eerily similar to what existed prior to "Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka", except on a larger scale. Now, instead of just a school being
segregated, entire districts are segregated.
And, as long as the funding of all the districts is equitable, this
willful segregation cannot be easily erased by the judiciary, if it can be
erased at all.
The result of all of this, then, is
that forty years after we tried to force the issue, forty years after the
courts ordered people to "mingle" (so to speak), we have a
segregation that is far worse than what existed forty years ago, because now we
have the "illusion" of equality.
We say on job applications that we do not discriminate based on race,
sex, etc. If you really believe what it
says on those job applications, then it's time to get a reality check. We still discriminate, except now we hide it
under the ruse of qualifications. Or,
an even better one is when they ask you what kind of transportation you have,
and then disqualify you because of inadequate transportation.
The real tragedy of Central High
is that everybody has used the events of 1957 as a sign that the civil rights struggle
is over. Central is now integrated, the
argument goes, and so "everything is up to date in Kansas City." We are now one big, happy, multi-cultural
family where a person of any racial or cultural background can reach the top.
Have we really reached true
equality? Or have we just constructed a
nice facade to delude ourselves into thinking that we have so that we don't
have to face the pain of acknowledging that "the Great Society" is an
abysmal failure?