Today I endured my final Black History Month program. I've never been quite comfortable with the idea of devoting a month to celebrate one race over the others...seems counter-productive to the idea that we are all Americans equally, with none inherently superior.With regard to the programs, I've seen it all. Once we had John Wiley Price as our speaker, and he railed against Anglos throughout...and this was after he did not stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
In the '90's, there was never any "history" to our programs. Just vulgarly gyrating dancers exhibiting what I assume was their culture.
Today we had DISD board trustee Ron Price enlighten us. Ole Ron is a character. He is a convicted wife-beater, but is nonetheless allowed to sit on the school board. He is well-known for being, shall we say, disingenuous. Knowing beforehand that he loved to stretch the truth, particularly about himself, I listened keenly. Here are the gems:
"I am the chairman of a $2 billion company." (Name of the company, sir?)
"The Alamo was fought because of slavery." (Just check any Texas history book)
"Stewardesses (sic) make $100,000 a year."
Uh, maybe our assemblies should be Price-less.
2 comments:
Tim--I enjoy reading your blogs and seeing your awesome aviation pic's. I link from Brett and Jenny's site. You take awesome photo's, by the way. Re: your last post. I'm with you on not feeling comfy celebrating one race over another. Thank you for being the one to come right out and say it. I believe we are all one race, the human race. In the eye's of God we are all HIS creation. It's man that divides. I once worked for an african american boss who had the mentality (and verbalized it) that because of his race he could "never be fired" from his job...seems like he enjoyed celebrating that he was more entitled to keep his job than I. Somehow, I can't believe that MLK would have played the "race card". Just my personal beliefs.
Heather: There may have been a time when it was appropriate to "catch up" on black history. But now, black history is integrated into nearly every chapter of Texas History I teach.
To continue to emphasize one section of our populace runs counter to the goal of a multi-cultural society. Indeed, from what I see, it does the opposite. You should see how uncomfortable the Hispanic kids are during these assemblies.
All these programs accomplish is to drive wedges deeper into the racial division we have.
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