Philadelphia schools to require African, black history

Associated Press ^ | 06/09/2005 | Maryclaire Dale

[backtothestreets]

This is very bad. Will the schools in Los Angeles follow with classes on Mexican American history? Maybe Boston can add Irish-American history, or why not Catholic-American history, and New York can require Irish-American and Italian-American History. There's little worse than bureaucrats using their positions to separate people, and that's what I see the end result of this Philadelphia program bringing.

Maybe someday people will learn how freedoms truely came about in our country. Women's suffrage didn't end because women voted against it. Racial segregation didn't make the news because African-American media executives decided to air it. The the legislation pushed through Congress in the sixties wasn't by the hand of minorities.

It's saddening that we even have a holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. It's not a question of his character at all. If there must be such a day it would have been more aptly named Civil Rights Day, Human Rights Day, or some such designation. The changes that came about in our society were because people in power made the changes happen within. If racism is to end in this nation, it must be recognized people of all colors have a hand in it, not just minorities.