I don’t have a lot to add to what others are saying and have already said about the man and what he stood for. Anecdotally, I can report that my son seems to lack a context in which he is able to grasp why folks would have taken issue with Dr. King’s principles or would have wanted to treat people differently based on their race; any more than he can grasp why people would want to discriminate based on hair color. I think that’s a good thing. In his school, primarily because of the proximity of Purdue, there are kids from a wide array of cultures. From what I can tell, they all seem able to play together without thinking a thing of it.
But, I probably want to make sure that I don’t oversimplify things by allowing Dr. King’s opponents and detractors to become caricatures of what they really were. As a kid, I remember digging in a little against the folks who said that the only difference between blacks and whites was the color of their skin. I knew there was more to it than that. There was a cultural and economic component — there still is, but I think it is diminishing. The differences between black and white, whether caused by nature or nurture, went beyond pigmentation alone; and, so, when someone would tell me that skin color was the only distinction, my reaction was to be distrustful of the rest of what the person had to say.
Race relations have come a long way since Dr. King died even if they they still have a good ways to go. He was instrumental in a lot of the progress that was made. I think we can all be thankful for that.
From Wikipedia:
The racial makeup of [West Lafayette] was 74.3% White, 17.3% Asian, 2.7% African American, 0.16% Native American, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 1.17% from other races, and 1.58% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.6% of the population.[8]
I was going to mock you for saying that your kid was in a “diverse” class (and at 75% white, I still might), it is surprising that there are 17% Asian in West Lafayette. That is a quite high number for Indiana.
college town
I think his elementary school has more diversity than the city in general. I don’t recall the break down in his class; but his younger sister’s smaller kindergarten class had slightly less than 50% white. And, of the whites in the school there are a fair number with parents who are, say, Eastern European.
In my mind, the cultural/economic component is the real issue.Having your kid share a class with kids; regardless of race or national origin, from stable families that value education is a good thing. Kids with a lot of family drama and no real emphasis on learning are going to be a challenge in the classroom regardless of race or national origin.
Kids with a lot of family drama and no real emphasis on learning are going to be a challenge in the classroom regardless of race or national origin.
Absolutely. That is the bottom line. And not only is it not a racial thing, it isn’t even a class thing. The people who owned my home before me were well off, the dude was the CEO of our local hospital. But their kids were f’d up (I think because he was such an a-hole), he left his wife for a younger chick and went off to Europe. One of the kids was really messed up because of it, and was actually arrested in the house because he was dealing drugs out of it.
Some upscale towns like Valpo have a huge heroin problem. Porter County is very white, and quite a bit wealthier than Lake County, but there are constant stories in the paper about “white trash doing bad things”.
I’m a bit surprised so strongly to agree with you, buddy – both on the main blog and the comments.
I don’t know what the differences are beyond skin pigmentation, but (a) I don’t think its all “nurture” that makes the racial mixes in football and basketball what they are and (b) there’s wide variation of aptitudes within “racial” groups, so one must treat individuals individually.
I also don’t think human equality requires individual interchangeability. In that sense, I still consider race a “pigment of the imagination.”