The "Good Old American Tradition"

I doubt there has ever been a day where I wanted time machines to exist more than I did today.

Segregation has always been a uniquely American issue. Whether you think of Kamala Harris telling Joe Biden that “that little girl was me” during one of the democratic presidential debates last year, or the picture of five-feet-tall black children calmly walking into school, surrounded by Marshalls, while white (grown, adult) parents scream obscene words and throw things at them, or even that “The Story of Ruby Bridges” picture book we all read in elementary school, the words “bussing” and “integration” surely evoke an almost visceral, automatic reaction. 

Listening to this podcast, I found myself writing increasingly passive aggressive things into the graphic organizer we all had to fill out. While I started out the neutral voice of reason I hope to be as a writer, I ended with no fewer than three “this disgusts me” and two “apparent racisms”. However, after talking to my mother about desegregation and discrimination in education, I almost wonder if I can truly blame them. I remember my sister talking about this two years ago, when Troy High was considering annexing Clawson; the technical and logistical details of merging with an entire school district is no small matter. The administration would have had to consider class sizes, building capacities, distribution of resources, not to mention adapt their database to fit the new Clawson student records. Now, Clawson has a similar racial makeup to Troy, so I doubt the reason we eventually denied their annexation request was our fear of “violence, drugs, robbers, and guns”, but the point still stands: there are few things parents value more (or are willing to fight more for) than the education of their children. 

And while being blinded during highly emotional “this determines your future” moments is hardly something you can judge a privileged parent for, this universal truth applies to parents of black children as well. To hinder their children’s education for no reason other than a small, restricted worldview is not only utterly foolish, but also appallingly self centered. Listening to this podcast, I felt a wave of helplessness, and the recurring thought I had was: wouldn’t it just be easier if people weren’t racist to begin with?

And yes, that does seem to be the answer to our problems. To not enslave people to begin with, to not segregate and redline to begin with, to not obstruct the progress of integration movements to begin with, to uphold all schools to the same standards to begin with, to have no school be so terrible that they lose their accreditation from the state to begin with. 

But alas, we’re stuck with a world of people who can’t seem to agree on what basic human rights should be extended to everyone, let alone how to extend those rights. I’ve never claimed to have all the answers. But the more I learn, the more I wonder if answers even exist.  

Towards the end of the podcast, when the Normandy students arrived at Francis Howell building to be greeted with cheerleaders and loving friends, made me a little emotional. It reminds me that if fifteen year old girls can be unprejudiced and extend basic kindnesses towards each other, perhaps the rest of the world can too. It got me thinking-- teenagers are often judged for being overly emotional and impulsive, but perhaps we know more than the adults that are so filled with hatred they call all Normandy children drug dealers for an hour during a town hall meeting.