This is sad and bodes ill for our society.
I’m not kidding, the NYTs and CBS flog this story every year.
Why do they continue doing this?
Assuming that the “segregation” is voluntary I can’t see a problem.Citizens...black and white...still enjoy the right of free association.
From the article it would appear that the kids have it figured out as they hang out with each other and practice inter racial dating.
It is a certain group of parents who have minds sruck in the 1930’s.
Why does no one ask ONE simple question: why do MOST people in America - no matter whether white, black, “Hispanic”, or some denomination of Asian - of every political persuasion, and even in the most “integrated” communities, MOST often seek mates that they have ethnic commonality with?
Is it really “racism”, or simply what MOST humans have always done when looking for “compatibility”?
Isn’t it most likely that it was that natural gravitation to seek “commonality” that led, over a long-time process, to the distinctions that have come to be called “race”?
Isn’t there a true and honest and natural distinction, morally and intellectually, between “opposition” to “the other” and simple preference for the familiar? While the former maybe ought to be opposed, morally, must the later be opposed as well?
I think the best course is to let students involved in this issue, personally make their own choices; whatever those choices may be.
bump
I graduated High School in Montgomery Country Maryland, hardly a bastion of back-woods, racist mentality. We also had two proms, only in our case Whites were excluded.
We had our formal school Prom, the following weekend the Black Caucus at my school had theirs.
This was their choice and their choice alone, the school prom was open to all seniors and their dates.
We didn’t have a segrgated prom intentionally but there were no blacks in my graduating class so the prom was 100% white. There was about 3 black kids in the whole school but none in my class.
UCLA holds separate graduations every year for all the various minority students on their campus. This is seen as a celebration of “diversity”. I’m sure this move would win praise at the NYT.
So why is it bad when Proms are segregated in the south?
At the high school level, the ensuing in-school race riots went on for six or seven years. Even the FBI was called in and made an arrest at one high school I know of.
Either the districts were gerrymandered to have severe racial imbalence, or there was conflict.
That made for one heck of an 'education', but not much schooling got done.
Now, this may be an unpopular (not politically correct) thought, but before submitting to the knee jerk urge to call me a racist, consider that there were no real discipline problems in predominantly black or white schools before integration.
Consider that the quality of education received in either was leaps and bounds ahead of what today's often nearly innumerate and illiterate graduates get.
Consider that discipline did not get shunted aside for considerations of NAACP and ACLU Lawsuits, but was stern and swift.
Order was maintained, and the students learned, with academic achievement a clear goal.
If having seperate proms allows both groups to have their own style of music, dancing, and fun without causing hard feelings, all the better for it.
If the students wanted it otherwise, I am sure they would insist on it being so.
Or do we all have to have our right to associate with whom we choose, when we choose subsumed to the collective cultural emulsion.
If this is what the students want, why not?
There are many who will sit in judgement behind their keyboards and decry the idea that students from the same school might not want to associate with others from the same school. Have at. It is still a little bit of a free country.
In my humble opinion, the choice should be up to the students, and it is not the business of the AP, NYT, or even FReepers to judge these students as if they are some cracker KKK types (partly because there is a black prom, too), which seems to be a knee jerk reaction.
So let me ask this. How many of those who think this is so horrible ever went to a school where they (and their culture) was in the minority?
How many of you think you or anyone else has the right to force these students, by virtue of law, lawsuit, or just the 'court of popular opinion' to conform to your ideas of what you think they should live like? Who are you to judge?
There should be two proms, forget race. One prom for hot girls the other for fat girls only. /sarc