Ugly Scrawl Hits Home

The Boston Globe ^ | 10-15-03 | Eileen McNamara

[misterrob]

I really detest reading Ellen Goodman. The never ending quest for finding victims in society gets tiring after a bit.

[CastleMan95]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2003/10/15/wellesley_school_links_graffiti_to_metco_teen/

The above is the story as reported in the Boston Globe today...goes along with the column by the Lib. Ms. McNamara.

[madprof98]

it's a black kid. excuses must be found, rationalization must be discovered, he's a victim.

I recently read a book that tried to make excuses for the men on Death Row here in Georgia. Naturally, it dismissed the blacks as victims of racism. But what about the inconvenient fact that almost all of them had killed other black people? Ah, said the liberal writer, they must have done that because our racist society had taught them that the lives of black people were not valuable. And the beat goes on . . .

[CatoRenasci]

Well, if you were black, and thought of yourself as in the "talented tenth" (and what striver doesn't), DuBois' approach has a certain self-interested attraction. Not to mention a whole lot of appeal to the white guilt-ridden crowd who can demonstrate their moral purity by admitting a few blacks to the better schools and training them to be salonfaehig for show and tell at liberal cocktail parties and foundation dinners.

[an amused spectator]

What does it mean that the teenager who scrawled a threat on a bathroom wall to burn down Wellesley High School so "there will be no blacks in our schools" is black himself? Why would a student, bused from Dorchester for 11 years to schools in this western suburb, choose to vent his frustration or rage or pain by assuming the persona of a white racist? When is a troubled kid just a troubled kid?

Maybe that the youth learned something from the Sumner-like media caning of Rush Limbaugh the previous week? :-)

[AnAmericanMother]

You know, the 'talented tenth' will take care of themselves. They always have. The super-motivated succeed no matter what.

It's the average student that needs a well-organized, disciplined, motivating school to get behind him and give him the tools and the drive to succeed.

[KellyAdmirer]

Maybe the kid just hates schoolwork and wants to go back to his easier school - or no school at all. Some things in life are just made more complicated than they have to be. Looking for huge implications for society here or something is a fool's errand.

[CatoRenasci]

Yes, but unfortuantely, one of the ways they're taking care of themselves is the DuBois approach of getting theirs on the backs of everyone else. And actually, I was think less of the truly talented, the Tom Sowells and Ward Connerlys, than the top tenth wannabes (or think-they-ought-to-bes) who get by on the help. It reminds me of many party libertarians I used to know in California in the ''60s and ''70s: third raters who thought they were first raters, but because they'd been put down by the evil government hadn't been able to be successful. Gag me with a spoon!

[AnAmericanMother]

It's really a mess. I get so frustrated thinking of all the kids who aren't getting the leadership they need!

[CatoRenasci]

I know what you mean. I think I am almost past caring: I worked for civil rights in the '60s -- probably one of the few SSOC (Southern Students Organizing Committee - what was left of the whites in SNCC when the blacks decided whitey had to go) at VMI. I was never a political liberal, but I have always believed legal segregation was wrong. I was active as a graduate student in the University of California system working to design affirmative action programs -- our version (that was all remediation away from the university, and then come to the university when (if) you're ready to meet the standards everyone else meets) narrowly lost to the version that we've ended up with.

Now, after 30 years of policies of bussing and affirmative action I was arguing were stupid the whole time, with results even worse than I and others predicted, and the minority community happily embracing hand outs and even demanding reparations, I guess I'm just emotionally and morally deadened to it all. If that's how they want it, I'll do what I can for my own kids and the devil take the hindmost.

[Budge]

Bears repeating - many times!

Congratulations, Civil Rights Movement. This is the fruit of your labour, and IMO, exactly what you want.

[Devil_Anse]

So a black high school student wrote graffiti that said "We'll burn down the school so no more blacks can attend it"? And it seems understood that he did this to make it look like white students did it?

He's just following the role model, Al Sharpton, presidential candidate.

It never ceases to amaze me that a person who perpetrated a similar but far more involved hoax, then proceeded to ruin a man's life out of racism and revenge, then when losing a court case the man brought, refused to pay up and to this day has not paid up, is actually being interviewed on TV, taken seriously as a candidate, and actually viewed as just another political hopeful.