No “Ifs, ands, or buts about it” – Separate but Equal...is not equal when there’s a butt in the way

For those of you who don’t know Brown vs. Board of Education was an American Supreme Court decision establishing that separate public schools for black and white students was unconstitutional. This decision occurred in 1954. Almost 60 years ago. Apparently not everybody in America is aware that separate but equal...it not equal. 

While perusing the news yesterday, I came across THIS ARTICLE. It describes a rural county in Georgia which apparently hasn’t leaped into the 21^st century. Wilcox County High School has not had a school sponsored prom for the last four decades; instead, they allow the community and students to have their own private proms, which are segregated by black and white students. Whether or not the proms are separated by skin color voluntarily is irrelevant.  

“Some say some preachers and some parents implicitly encourage segregation...” This answers the question of how voluntary these segregated proms really are. 

"If we're all together and we love each other the way we say we do, then there are no issue[s],” says Mareshia Rucker, a brave student who spearheaded the first integrated prom this year. For the bible thumpers out there, I believe a guy named Mark is quoted as saying “'Love your neighbor as yourself” – but who really follows the bible these days?...Apparently no one who also willingly discriminates against their neighbor for looking or living differently than themselves. 

While attending college at East Carolina University (in North Carolina), at times I thought I had walked into America forty years ago. I exited my car, closed the door to my Hyundai Elantra, aka DeLorean, and was as surprised as Marty McFly. There was a Black student union and a “regular” student union, there were racial tensions at the clubs and professors clearly had it out for the students of color. I had a professor claim that our small, intimate communication class of 14 students was his most intelligent and favorite class in his X amount of years of teaching because there were no “n word” students. I was so angry from his remarks. I had another professor tell me that her young “son had jungle fever,” and refused to let him attend a birthday party of an African American classmate.  I had a roommate (albeit brief) ask me if I had AIDS when she found out I had been to Ghana. The Civil Rights Movement, which peaked in the 60s, did not end racial discrimination. Americans need to do so much more to resolve racial inequality in this country.

While teaching at an urban charter school last year, I asked my students what was worse: the holocaust or slavery. The Nuremberg Laws, which legalized segregation of Jewish people in Germany, lasted for about one decade; whereas, the Jim Crow Laws, which legalized segregation in America, lasted for almost 9 decades. While the Holocaust was a terrible time in our World history, I find it very hypocritical for the American government to think that they’re any better by freeing people across the world from segregation when in fact they had parallel laws on their own soil at the same time.  

“These young girls, I applaud them in one sense because they were willing to do something, but then I look at them and think to myself, there is such a better way of doing this than going to the media," says a Wilcox County local resident named Melissa Davis. If communities are not willing to change, including coveted preachers, parents and teachers, then how else should young people be expected to transform this country into a more modern day, and tolerant society?  Thomas Jefferson cowrote our Declaration of Independence saying, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” 

I wonder when America will finally realize that all men are truly equal, and no person is less than another for any reason. Surely, the USA should be a forerunner of modernity and an accepting culture backed by laws, which promote equality, rather than stagnating in antiquity and allowing people to promote segregation.

Perhaps Thomas Jefferson is too outdated and we need to listen to someone more contemporary, like Michael Jackson:

For gangs, clubs, and nations
Causing grief in human relations
It's a turf war on a global scale
I'd rather hear both sides of the tale
See, it's not about races
Just places
Faces
Where your blood comes from
Is were your space is
I've seen the bright get duller
I'm not going to spend my life being a color

Don't tell me you agree with me
When I saw you kicking dirt in my eye

But, if you're thinkin' about my baby
It don't matter if you're black or white

I said if you're thinkin' of being my baby
It don't matter if you're black or white

I said if you're thinkin' of being my brother
It don't matter if you're black or white 

Take a bite out of discrimination...and eat both the black and the white- the icing may be different, but the cookie tastes the same.