Posted on 05/26/2003 2:39:22 AM PDT by oldconservative
This spring, white students at Johnson County High in Wrightsville, Ga., continued a tradition they have followed since desegregation. They held a prom separate from the school prom – for white students only. As did the juniors at neighboring Taylor County High.
News of the separate proms reached Bill O'Reilly at Fox News, who angrily demanded that Gov. Sonny Perdue attend the official Taylor County prom in protest. As columnist Sam Francis writes, O'Reilly seemed miffed that there was no law or authority to stop this outrage:
"You can't sue because the event is being held off-campus. It's a private party, and no person of color is welcome. Yet, the party is being held under the banner of Taylor High's junior prom. Yes, there is an alternative prom where everyone is welcome, but still a number of your classmates do not want to celebrate with you."
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, law student Jeffrey Shapiro seemed even more indignant: "It's hard to imagine that the practice of segregation still exists in the United States, but it does," Shapiro states. "Authorities are powerless to intervene."
Yes, and a good thing they cannot intervene, Jeffrey. For if this country is about anything, it is freedom. And just as the Bill of Rights prevents the state from interfering with what Shapiro or O'Reilly writes or says, the Constitution protects the freedom of school kids in Taylor County, Ga., to associate with whomever they wish
When O'Reilly says that an all-white prom appears to be a snub of black schoolmates, he may be right. But it may also mean the white kids simply prefer to party together. As for Shapiro's assertion that "segregated proms" are one of "the worst public displays of racism in today's America," that is absurd.
The ugliest manifestations of racism today are not all-white proms, but interracial crimes such as gang assaults, gang shootings and gang rapes.
As this term racist is tossed about, perhaps it is time to define it. To this writer, racism means a hatred or hostility toward some other race that manifests itself in a desire to deny the other justice.
What O'Reilly and Shapiro are upset about is something else altogether. For there is no evidence the white kids of Taylor County hate all their black classmates. A preference for socializing with one's own is not hatred. CYO dances used to be restricted to baptized Catholics. That didn't mean the priests and nuns hated all non-Catholics. The same is true for the Newman clubs and Hillel houses on college campuses. These clubs represent the desire of a group to socialize together. This is not racism. It is natural and normal, and there is nothing morally reprehensible about it.
As for the new separatism or self-segregation in schools, this appears to be more the wish of black students than of whites. Here, for example, is Washington Post writer Michael Fletcher describing the graduation events at Penn:
"The presentation of the class of 2003 was the central event at this year's Black Senior Celebration. The ceremony here, attended by almost half of the university's 140 black graduating seniors, followed separate celebrations that honored Asian American and Latino seniors in the weeks leading up to Penn's general graduation ceremony today. University officials say these racially and ethnically themed ceremonies are a way for minority students to celebrate their cultural connections."
If it is acceptable for black students in the Ivy League to hold segregated ceremonies to celebrate their "cultural connections," why is O'Reilly beating up on white high-school kids in rural Georgia for doing the same thing?
Vanderbilt, Michigan State, Michigan, Stanford and Berkeley all host separate ceremonies for black graduates. Across America, writes Fletcher, there are black "fraternities, sororities and culture centers." Black students "study in separate groups, they eat at segregated dining tables, and they unwind at separate parties."
Does this mean black students hate their white classmates? Of course not. They simply prefer to socialize with one another.
At Penn, the university even pays for the kente cloths and the sumptuous banquet at the graduation ceremony at the black student center Makuu. In Johnson and Taylor counties, parents pay for the white proms.
Again the question reasserts itself: If it is perfectly acceptable for black, Asian and Hispanic students to have separate dorms and cultural centers in college, subsidized by tax dollars, why is it an outrage that white high-school kids in rural Georgia have their own prom, paid for by their own parents? Whatever did these white folks do to lose the right to equal respect and equal treatment?
Tha reminds me. I have not seen O'Reilly get O'riled up about the fact that there is a magazine titled BLACK WOMAN magazine. There is JET magazine. There is EBONY magazine, etc. But I yet to see White Woman mag, or Cloud mag, or Ivory mag...How 'bout it O'Reilly???
So if two school kids say "Let's go get some lunch." would O'Reilly want a school offical to make sure there was minority representation at McDonald's?
He knew. He was ignoring it. I, for one, wrote him about it as I know others did too. One of his guests pointed it out on one of the shows where he was harping on it and he glossed over it. It didn't fit into his talking points I guess. I found it interesting that he was practically foaming at the mouth over this issue though. Made me wonder what personal nerve it had touched on and just WHY it made him so angry.
Listening to 6 minutes of that garbage is hell if you don't like it, and in my experience, most people don't with the exception of many blacks and a few white kids who are wannabe blacks.
I've made that point many times, but the PC crowd's eyes just glaze over. And it's funny how the black KKK NAACP presumes the authority to hold the KKK up as the epitome of racism. I can see little difference except that the black KKK NAACP is more pervasive and is actually taken seriously by most blacks while the KKK is seen as a radical fringe element, even by most whites.
O'reilly has the best ratings on Cable because he puts into words what more people than not have been wanting to say or knew was the case about a particular issue. In this case, he missed the mark- nothing new. If you think he's suddenly lost his ability to intelligently decipher an issue, you'd be sorely wrong.
On occassiona, O'Reilly blathers like anyone else.
If you don't think he stops the spin- as the show theme goes- all you have to do is make a list of all the dingbat liberals who won't put their baloney on the line on the most watched show in cable- the O'Reilly Factor... people like Hillary Clinton, Bubba Clinton, etc... O'Reilly doesn;t let people get away with nonesense. It's just that simple, and more times than not, liberals run from actually discussing the merits of their whacked out dreams for America.
'nuff said...
I don't think you have to attend, just collect boxtops or something.
Exactly.. And, what's the alternative? Forced "integration" in your garage-slash-rec room? This is insane. Even if it is racist, what's so often overlooked is that people have a RIGHT to be racists if they choose.
I'll bet he was.. Because when you get down to brass tacks, that's the kind of shallow, micro-controlling, populist thinker O'Reilly really is.
But I continue to pay attention to these two men and read what they write because on those occasions when they are on target, no one says it better.
O'Reilly is and has been a populist.
It's obvious, the man is horribly strained and conflicted politically. No conservative.
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