Comprehension has disappointingly proven to be a difficult task when it comes to understanding the way the human mind works. One would think that if you live long enough that discretion, common sense, and wisdom would progress with human beings. That the growth would mirror the dreadful element that all of us have to contend with: Aging to Die.
I will be 40 in a few weeks. In my lengthy moments of serious contemplation I must proudly disclose that I am a little wiser than I was last year at this time. That is a good thing considering for several years I can transparently disclose that I have allowed lessons to go unlearned time after time. Thankfully, we have opportunities (too many in some cases) to reflect. Time to reevaluate. Moments to reassess and hopefully re-center. Meditation works!
Teacher in Trouble After Students Don Klan Robes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOLrA3gR6eU
Catherine Ariemma had to know her decision to permit the wearing of Klu Klux Klan attire by two students would be insensitive. She had too! Okay, she has admitted that she made the mistake of allowing the two white boys to walk down a school hallway to shoot a historical video was in poor judgment. I will give her that, and I actually ‘receive’ her apology along these lines. What I cannot accept is her decision making to include such a vivid representation. That decision was just asininely stupid. No matter what history lesson she was trying to convey it does not justify her outlandish decision.
How would Jewish students respond to a makeshift construct of gas chambers that are used to inform other students about the Holocaust? I would imagine Ms. Ariemma and her superiors would receive the same response if a teacher of German decent got on the school’s intercom system and declared, ‘The Holocaust never happened. That part of history is a fairytale.’
What would be the fallout if during Black History Month…wait - are hyper-sensitive blacks, calling it African American History Month these days? – an African American history teacher had a black male student to dress as Nat Turner and behave as Nat Turner in a play to commemorate his historical footprint? Nat was no joke! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html.
Both examples would display ridiculous decision making.
As we discuss this matter ad nauseam I hope we are comprehending the practical meaning we should gain from Ariemma’s dumb decision: Think before acting. Think before doing something that may hurt already mutilated feelings.
In this case, Her-Story lesson or not, the Klan should be discussed without attention grabbing theatrics. If not, what will be next? A public school produced play (get that? – taxpayers pay Catherine’s salary) to teach students the affects of slavery? Actually, that might be a good idea. But, I am not sure if I would be able to stomach how white America’s ancestors threw Africans over board slave ships when the Africans got sea sick, how Africans were sold like cattle on the shores of the Americas, how African women were raped by slave owners, how if a African got pregnant she was taking the chance of the fetus being cut out her womb, how African men were castrated all in effort to humiliate, how African children were forced to pick cotton instead of learning their 123’s and ABC’s, how well over one million Africans were lynched on the Land of the Free… http://markwadestone.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/lynching-1889.jpg
The realistic account described above is still wreaking havoc all across the hypocritical United States, the exploited Caribbean, and brutally imperialized Africa.
Someone tell the pearl wearing teacher that please. Someone please tell her that most Americans know that race has to be discussed openly in America. So happens, she does not need to tell black Americans that fact. She should perhaps mention it at her lily white social club meeting or at her church that probably would be in an uproar if a black man walked through the church doors with a Cindy this Sunday.
White Americans need the history lesson…blacks live the history every single day in this hell-bound white country! With that, let’s keep in mind that America is going to hell because of those in charge…President Obama is not in charge, Black People! Stop dreaming. Wake the hell up!
By the way, someone please share with me the obvious:
Why is there so much disrespect directed at not only President Obama – but the Office of the Presidency?
http://gantdaily.com/2010/05/26/obama-handles-heckler-for-second-time/
Written by Brian E. Payne.
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