Racism still alive, they just be concealing it.
It’s sad that the last sentence that you read still applies today. What’s not sad is the fact that there are no more segregated schools in Florida. Better yet, there aren’t anymore legally segregated schools in the United States, so you should be thankful for that.
However can you think of what it must have been like to go to a school with only once race? For many people alive on planet Earth today they can tell you that exact feeling.
“You didn’t think about that because you didn’t see a lot of mixing races back then….{Now} you see a lot of interracial couples. Black and white people on commercials. Those are natural and normal for you to see. Back then there wasn’t anything wrong with it, you just didn’t see it….you thought that your education was just as superior and the teachers were just as good.”
I had the best of teachers. The best of cultures. The best of times” said Anthony Witherspoon.
Growing up Witherspoon attended George Washington Carver Middle School in South Florida when it was still segregated. Witherspoon didn’t have a problem with the way that the school was structured because of the way that it impacted everyone’s lives. Even though segregation was meant for evil, ironically it helped strengthen the African-American community.
“You could walk down the street and the community would know you…The family unit was much stronger back then. There were more two parent households.There was more discipline in the schools. You {students} represented your family.”
With that sense of pride a lot of students went to school hoping to become a person that would help change the world.
A lot of people don’t realize how far this country has come in such a short amount of time. Desegregation was a huge beneficial movement for African-Americans who lived in the south back in the mid 1960’s and late 1980’s. That means that you could ask your grandparents and some of your parents how it felt going to a school where there was only one skin color allowed.
Isn’t that something to marvel? The stuff that we read and hear about in history books in the year 2015 is only less than 40 years old. People in our society are walking history books these days.
Because segregated schools are no longer in service a lot of people have benefitted. Being able to go to school with other children of other races and getting to learn their culture and become more knowledgeable within the world is intelligence that cannot be attributed with a price tag.
Even though in this short period we’ve come very far, we’ve still got a long way to go.
You don’t have to look that much further back to see how ugly the south can truly be. There was a shooting of a church bible study in South Carolina because the victims were a different skin color than the Caucasian shooter. It even sparked a profound statement from the President of the United States, Barack Obama.
During an interview for the podcast WTF with Marc Maron, Obama said this.
“Racism, we are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public.”
The President might have been onto something with his comments because even though segregation was legally abolished, it’s still been flying under the radar in many schools.
According to the UCLA Civil Rights Project they found out that minorities are the ones who are still feeling the effects of segregation. Black and Latino students are normally the students who are attending schools with a majority of low-income families. As for Caucasian and Asian students, they are attending more affluent schools.
Even though there’s much work to get to in regards to making all schools on an even playing field, times are changing rapidly.
It won’t be long until we start seeing low-income schools turn into some of the best schools within the district.
Nothing last forever, that includes racism too.
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