I had a bumbling, I’m not racist but, boss in Waco, TX who happened to be from Michigan. I’m Chinese (good minority), and Waco is very white. Two weeks into working there it’s me, my direct manager (DM), and bumbleboss (BB) out to lunch. Waitress takes our drink orders, DM orders a coffee while BB and I get water. As the waitress walks off, BB says “I remember when I was a kid, my dad always told us that we shouldn’t drink coffee, or we’d turn into a black boy…”
I’m shocked into silence, uncomfortable smile and just wait until the topic changes. Lunch finishes and my wits have finally come back to me and I think “Dammit, I should’ve told them my parents always told me not to drink milk.”
Smart move. The town has a lot of white low income seniors who are struggling. The perfect demographic ripe to blame other races for their situation.
I’m wondering, where were the adults from the NAACP? Why were they not present to act as escorts for these brave kids?
What are you talking about? Even giving you the broadest benefit of the doubt, this still seems like it’s vaguely racist and off-topic? What “brave kids”?
Sarcasm, I hope? (Sometimes it’s hard to tell these days.)
I suspect it’s a response to this post upthread - City council candidate openly endorses racism
If it’s in response to that, then the answer to:
…is that Eckhardt was the only one of the nine to come alone outside of the main group, because her family didn’t have a phone.
If it was an honest question, now everyone knows. It’s the question of someone who didn’t even do a cursory read before casting blame on the black people who actually forced the de-segregation of schools. If it was an attempt to put the blame for the actions of white bigots on the NAACP, then get out of here.
You know who gets the blame for the actions of white bigots that day? White bigots.
It’s also the question of someone who doesn’t understand how many of the civil-rights-era protests worked (or who is asking in bad faith). A well-planned demonstration is performative, and designed to create precisely the optics that this photo created. The ultimate point wasn’t to get these few students in particular into the schools, it was to create broader change in part by revealing just how bad things were. Adult “escorts” from the NAACP would have diluted the messaging, and been beside the point.
Cynicism with a little bit of sarcasm.
If she ignores the complaints to step down she’ll probably get reelected for another term. It’s a 97% white town, kids grow up there without seeing a black person except on TV. Having grown up in an insular community myself I expect that this will work out in some way where there are no real consequences and nobody learns anything.
This stuff isn’t just a small town in Michigan - the orange skull has given license to racist in the country.
This wasn’t a protest (it was the white bigots who were protesting) and the Memphis 13 weren’t protesters. They were students trying to get to school in the face of organized and virulent bigotry. Successful integration of schools was the point, the NAACP didn’t stage the kids going to their first day at school, it was court-ordered. They did help prepare the kids before the day to deal with the protestors that were there, but any “message” they would have been happy with was “Black students in schools is no big deal.” not “If you send black kids to white schools they’ll be beaten.”
This wasn’t staged, it involved the one student who didn’t join the organized car-pool. It was the white “responsible adults” who saw her alone, harassed her, and who made it something that had “optics”.
I don’t remember those “confused Star Trek androids” being mouth breathers as well!
Point taken – I’m not up on the particulars of this incident. I was thinking of something more along the lines of e.g. Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat.
Totally understandable. This one was attempting to protect a court “win” and advancement super calmly and incident-free, in the face of a bunch of demonstrators who showed up to make segregation look like an impossible project that only ended in violence.
In a shock to no one , she promptly doubles down
I’ll bet her family tree doesn’t fork.
That’s one way of ensuring racial purity in one’s family. Worked for the Habsburgs.
Not in the South. Dodged a bullet on that one.
She’s dropped out of the race.
Too bad the orange skull doesn’t get the message…
Well, there is a little bit of good news.