(no subject)
A school bus driver in Louisiana directed nine black children to two seats in the back of the bus to give the front seat to white children. Thank god Jim Crow's over, right? Oh, wait. this was last week.
I don't even know where to begin with this one. For a moment, let's set aside the racial implications, and think about the fact that this brilliant individual saw nothing wrong with putting nine children in two bus seats (so that the younger ones were sitting on the older ones' laps). Could he not then, if she was already going to put them in harm's way like that, have endangered their lives in the middle of the bus? There are certain...images that are evoked when a bus driver says, "hey, you, get up so this white kid can sit here."-- intentional or not; and people are bound to get pissed off.
Oh, wait, but it gets better. After the parents filed a complaint, the driver was asked to draw up an assigned seating chart for her bus, which she complied with-- by assigning all the black children to the back of the bus! Really, that just takes balls. Of course, the school board here is handling this diplomatically; while the situation is being investigated, they're having a black bus driver drive across town to pick up these nine children. Hey, forget about moving them to the back of the bus, we'll put 'em on their own bus-- that's worked so well in the past!
I think my head just exploded.
And my dad still doesn't understand why I'm not comfortable moving Jase to the south.
Anyway--thoughts, opinions?
I don't even know where to begin with this one. For a moment, let's set aside the racial implications, and think about the fact that this brilliant individual saw nothing wrong with putting nine children in two bus seats (so that the younger ones were sitting on the older ones' laps). Could he not then, if she was already going to put them in harm's way like that, have endangered their lives in the middle of the bus? There are certain...images that are evoked when a bus driver says, "hey, you, get up so this white kid can sit here."-- intentional or not; and people are bound to get pissed off.
Oh, wait, but it gets better. After the parents filed a complaint, the driver was asked to draw up an assigned seating chart for her bus, which she complied with-- by assigning all the black children to the back of the bus! Really, that just takes balls. Of course, the school board here is handling this diplomatically; while the situation is being investigated, they're having a black bus driver drive across town to pick up these nine children. Hey, forget about moving them to the back of the bus, we'll put 'em on their own bus-- that's worked so well in the past!
I think my head just exploded.
And my dad still doesn't understand why I'm not comfortable moving Jase to the south.
Anyway--thoughts, opinions?