Posted on 09/03/2006 6:35:47 PM PDT by EveningStar
Racism, bigotry and discrimination have been completely eliminated in the United States of America. There is no more racial injustice to be found. Because when the FBI is summoned to a small town in Louisiana to investigate an allegation of a school bus driver making black children ride in the back of the bus, there must be no serious instances of race-related problems left.
I’ll spare you all the specific details of this preposterous situation. I can sum up what happened, based on numerous news reports, in one sentence: a white female veteran school bus driver told some black students who were some of the last ones to get on the school bus and were new students to take a couple of seats in the back.
That’s all in takes in 2006 America for all hell to break loose.
When word got back to some of the parents that the children were told to sit in the back of the bus, they went ballistic. Demands were made for the bus driver to be fired. The NAACP came riding into town, and Al Sharpton’s organization, never wanting to be left out of a good racial brawl, wound up smack dab in the middle of the mess.
The Justice Department was notified, and now the FBI, evidently running out of murders, rapes and kidnaping cases to investigate, began interviewing all the participants to find out if the children’s civil rights were violated.
I’m sure it will just be a matter of days before the multi-million dollar lawsuits are filed.
Evidently, a lot has changed since I went to school on a yellow bus. Back then, only the cool kids rode in the back. After all, those were the coveted seats, the ones farthest away from the driver and the place where the most fun could take place.
I suppose there is the possibility that the school bus driver, a 20 year veteran of ferrying children of all races to school each weekday, was simply pining away for the days of racial segregation and just suddenly decided that blacks should drink out of particular drinking fountains again, enter restaurants through different entrances, and begin riding in the back of the bus once more.
But I highly doubt it.
The more likely scenario is that the woman, who is said to be absolutely devastated by the allegation, doesn’t view children as white, black or Hispanic. She sees kids as kids, children of all races that she has carefully and safely driven to and from school for two decades.
The school superintendent said a bizarre thing to reporters who are clamoring over this story. She explained that the driver said there was no intent to segregate, just an attempt to seat late arriving children in empty seats in the back. But nevertheless, “Whatever the reasons, there will be absolutely no tolerance of this.”
No tolerance of what? Black children seated in the backs of school buses? Ever? Is that only the last row of the bus, or maybe the last three rows? Should only white schoolchildren sit in the back rows so that the black kids don’t have to be traumatized and have their civil rights viciously ripped away by some evil, white bus driver?
I’m not identifying the town in Louisiana or the name of the school bus driver. That community, and this woman, have already been smeared enough.
But a country that features Black Entertainment Television, Miss Black America pageants, and more recently, a reality TV show that pits one race of teammates against another race, ought to decide once and for all if we want to segregate or not.
Personally, I prefer a nation of united Americans. I’m sick of affirmative action quotas, the phrase “African-American”, and the ever-present race-baiters like Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
The real racists are people who want to demonize little old ladies who drive school buses while ignoring real instances of bigotry.
No one really believes that racism doesn’t exist. Of course there are still narrow-minded, ignorant people who hate someone because of the color of their skin. But we’ve come a long way since the days of Rosa Parks, the brave woman who stood up to segregation.
Sadly, making a federal case out of an apparently innocent act like this one takes us right back there.
Misc ping
She's gonna' get rich.
At one time myself and the neighbor girl were the first stop and we immediately headed to the very back seats every time. In later years when I had a reputation there was no way the driver was going to let me sit in the back.
I keep wondering when some "Hispanic" leaders will show up and exploit that possible gravy train.
Remember when kids used to ride the bus on field trips. We practically fought for the back seats. In high school at night basketball games Seniors had rights to the back seat with their cheer leader girlfriends. I am sure a lot of mono was passed on.
Plaintiffs-appellants Louise Sawyer and Grace M. Fuller are sisters and African Americans. Plaintiffs arrived at the departure gate for a Southwest Airlines (Southwest) flight from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Kansas City, Missouri. Because plaintiffs checked in less than ten minutes prior to departure, they were placed as priority-standby passengers on Southwest's next flight to Kansas City. After all non-standby passengers boarded the airplane, plaintiffs were allowed to board. While plaintiffs looked for open seats, a flight attendant announced: "Eenie, meenie, minie, mo, pick a seat, we gotta go."
Plaintiffs claimed that the announcement referred to a nursery rhyme with a racist history, and was directed specifically at them as African Americans because they were the only passengers in the aisle and who had not found seats.
http://www.kscourts.org/CA10/cases/2005/08/04-3109.htm
I was editing a promo video for a private school once and the music we were using was "No Business Like Show Business". One line of the song says, "The sheriff who escorts you out of town." We had quickly laid shots down and the one that fell against that line was a shot of three black girls. Well the client couldn't let that happen because someone might think we were implying criminal tendencies(?), We looked for other shots but every one had an identifiable "ethnic" in it. Finally the client said, "use the shot with the white males... they can take it."
Those of us in the Bus Utilization League/Society for Helping Improve Transport, have gotten serious, and rather than propose idiotic solutions, have instead prepared a position paper for the White House.
We propose to weld onto each and every school bus, an extension section of twenty or so additional seats which can then always be left vacant. This will eliminate the seething indignancy of children forced into intolerable situations. The stupid counterproposal of our rival organization, the National Urban Transport/ Joint Operating Busing Society, to restrict the rear seats to only white children will lead to endless lawsuits of seating discrimination. What could they have been thinking, with such a ludicrous proposal?
OCD.
I never rode in the back of the bus because I was one of the last stops on the route. The other guys always took those seats first.
(a former middle stop bus rider)
Simply put a mirror in the back of the bus. Then those in the back will think those in the front, including the bus driver, are in the back.
Spike Lee comes to mind.
Pardon me -
Is it possible to use the word "mind" in the same sentence, paragraph, post, thread, newsite, IP, universe with "Spike Lee"?
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