Irish Music and neo-Nazis

[Redwolf]

Consequently, there is a rise in these Aryan groups, skinhead youth, etc. and ethnic tensions in schools. I truly blame the educational system and deep thinkers for this unintended consequence of their parochial social engineering.

Re-reading this statement, it still makes about as much sense as blaming stock brokers in the WTC for 9/11.

I see a lot of where Weeks is coming from, but the link between skinheads and teaching *tolerance* and *appreciation* of different ethnicities (WHich is what most of us teachers do) seems disingenuous.

The problem is, when the schools are teaching "tolerance" and "appreciation" for some ethnic groups they're also busily teaching intolerance for others...particularly the white, mostly European group, which encompasses most of us who would have once proudly proclaimed ourselves to be "all-American mutts."

Trust me, the last thing you want to be in Santa Cruz these days is a white, straight, Christian, male. And yes...when there is a celebration in the schools for every ethnic group and religion under the sun except for the one you happen to belong to, it sets up exactly the kind of thing we DON'T want to see happening, i.e., kids so desperate to be validated that they join white supremicist groups and the like.

I don't blame the teachers, but I do blame the system they work for.

Redwolf

[Wormdiet]

How big is the skinhead white supremacist movement in urban, liberal California then?? THis is a serious qestion. SHow me some numbers and some plausible evidence supporting the multiculturalism --> racism connection and I might buy it.

Around here, the people into white supremacy (And I see them in the school parking lot on a fairly regular basis) come from rural, monolithic, depressed and undereducated communities that saw blacks as economic competition on the lowest rungs of society. About as far removed from hip SoCal as one can imagine.

Neo-nazism is a problem because little Johnny doesn;t get a European Culture day in school? For those of us on the other side of the fence, EVERY day is a "European Culture" day. We teach our kids English, every mathemathical or scientific theory they learn was probably innovated by a dead white guy, the "Music appreciation" classes are geared to the Western Art tradition. . .etc. etc. ad infinitum. If they balance swings a bit far in the other direction as a corrective, that's a problem. Especially in the cases raised about historical distortion, which have been helpfully brought to our attention. Nonetheless, the reasoning against multicultural education, as presented here, is weak.

[The Weekenders]

For those of us on the other side of the fence, EVERY day is a "European Culture" day. We teach our kids English, every mathemathical or scientific theory they learn was probably innovated by a dead white guy, the "Music appreciation" classes are geared to the Western Art tradition. . .etc. etc. ad infinitum. If they balance swings a bit far in the other direction as a corrective, that's a problem. Especially in the cases raised about historical distortion, which have been helpfully brought to our attention. Nonetheless, the reasoning against multicultural education, as presented here, is weak.

Well, I am not going to beat Mr. Ed to death Worm. But let's get real, with the exception of some Inuits mebbe, most everyone on this earth is adapting to a science-based Western model of mechanization, communication, transportation and material culture, for better or WORSE.

To be somehow miffed or embarrassed that most innovations can be tracked to post-Englightenment cultures shows an inability to accept reality because it might not make someone who is not white "feel good."
that's my whole point. Don't imply that materially advanced cultures are superior human beings, but show the kids how it got that way and let them decide what's better, instead of trying to falsely equalize cultures by sugar-coating the reality of hunter-gatherer life.

In this area, a lot of kids are indoctrinated about how important their Aztec heritage is. There are some fascinating mythological aspects of Aztec culture, but they tore feckin' hearts out of sacrificial victims and held em to the sun fercrynoutloud! The crosses have been removed in public places down in San Jose, but there is a giant Aztec monument that is a celebrated benefit for the cultural heritage of San Jose. As my 8th GGrandfather founded San Jose in thge late 1700s and was from a part of Mexico that was non-Aztec and converted to Roman Catholic to boot, I don't really get the value here.

Kids of all colors can look around and see the cars and stuff of material life. They don't need to be de-constructed and told of the superiority of some hunter-gatherer because they will just think you are crazy for supplying the cognitive dissonance. They should be taught that all humans were once hunter-gatherers, even the most abstracted cosmopolitans. It's not a source of embarrassment, it just is what it is.

Music appreciation may be geared toward Euro classical in your neck of the woods. At a junior high five miles from here, string ensemble was dropped in favor of a mariachi band, because there was more interest.
Increasingly, the back door way to train classical musicians is to get the young Mexican kids into mariachi, especially on violin and trumpet, as a gateway to other kinds of music. So it goes.

As far as I am concerned, ONE skinhead that is not from the wrong side of the tracks in a traditional sense is a travesty. There was NOTHING like that in my high school back in the early 70's in this area. Where the hell are these kids getting these ideas?

I raised my kids to do unto others, not name-call ethnicities, see all the kids as individuals. I send 'em to school and they come back and tell me how racist everything is. And what is really weird, is that my older boy went first to a very tough, very non-white school then transferred into a district which neighbors Berkeley and has many Berkeley type socially conscious parents. The racism is MORe pronounced at the more affluent district. The black kids lord their pop culture superiority over the white kids and the white kids try to fit in by being "wiggahs." My kid just laughs at 'em because he had direct experience of the ghetto, knows who he is and lives comfortably with himself at the expense of popularity.

I reiterate: everyone should be comfortable wearing their own skin and should not hear WORD ONE about it. But instead, they ARE hearing about it all the time from the very authorities entrusted to help guide them during daytime socialization.

I will try and find some skinhead numbers for ya.

[missy]

Weeks wrote:
"The black kids lord their pop culture superiority over the white kids and the white kids try to fit in by being "wiggahs." My kid just laughs at 'em because he had direct experience of the ghetto"

I think your son and mine would get along just fine.
Nate works in "Over the Rhine" - the area of Cincinnati where the "riots" were 3 years ago. He works at Findlay Market - a farmer's market, meat sellers, fish sellers, etc. area that has been there for over 100 years. He has customers from all walks of life - the rich from Hyde Park, down to the food stamp holders from the neighborhood. He works with the kids there - they always want to break up boxes for money, he'll tell them when to come to the back of the store to do so - one out of 10 of them actually come and do the work.
He went to an all boys Catholic High school that pulled from both city and suburbs. There were "wiggahs" there. He'd just laugh at them, too. He'd tell them to come down to work with him some Saturday, and act and dress like they were, and see how long they would last.

[Cynth]

Imagine teaching this lesson: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artic ... E_ID=25997

This "news" story was reported by the ASSIST News Service (ANS). Because the story sounded so extreme, I clicked on the link for the news service and eventually got to this:

"Dan Wooding is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times). Wooding is also a syndicated columnist, and was for ten years a commentator on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. Wooding is the author of some 39 books, one of which is "Blind Faith" which he co-authored with his 93-year-old mother Anne Wooding, who was a pioneer missionary to the blind of Nigeria in the 1930s. Copies of this book are available from the ASSIST USA office at PO Box 2126, Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126. His writings are on the ASSIST Website at: assist ministries. "
http://www.assistnews.net/strategic/s0107023.htm

and this:

"ASSIST News Service is brought to you in part by Open Doors USA, a ministry that has served the Suffering Church around the world for nearly 50 years. You can get more information by logging onto their website at www.opendoorsusa.org "
http://www.christiansincrisis.net/news/05072005.html

I don't think that this news service, given its clear association with Christian evangelism or ministries, would be one that I would feel was disinterested enough to report on this topic. The story may or may not be exaggerated (sp), and I am not in the habit of believing much of anything that I read, but I would need to be presented with a story submitted by a better known news service than this one before I would even investigate further.


I think children are most affected by their parents. If a child of European ancestry feels so alienated by recognition of other ethnic groups that the child becomes a white supremacist, I would strongly suggest looking at what that child's parents are like. Good grief!!

[Sunnywindo]

That's just it Wombly. Through the unofficial law of unintended consequences, they are being taught to view the world through multi-racial filters and the easiest way to do so is to create ethnic stereotypes, enhanced by cultural programs that emphasize THE COUNTRY THEY WERE FROM, not the place they are now. I believe that this leads to desires for "pure" blood and identity.

As I tried to point out before, this leaves multi-racial kids in the dust. I have read personal accounts of a Mexican and African-American mixed kid at Berkeley who was shunned by both groups. It was heart-breaking.

I will take the chances of an eyes open wide exposure to American history, with minimal bi-lingualism, that emphasizes the constitutional culture of the U.S. Despite the British overlay, there is no official ethnic culture of the United States. We sing to the flag, not to the Queen.

And its a lonely place for many. I have given my bilious rant elsewhere that the culture leaves some longing for an ethnic identity and my opinion is that I would infinitely prefer to be a hybrid American than to adopt customs of an old World country, including the prejudices etc etc.

I believe that the new thinking is causing a return to the old thinking it seeks to replace, by emphasizing the VALUE of the other immigrant cultures and languages and implying that its better that they be retained, reinforced and celebrated. And I disagree. With the exception of American Indian languages, I can see no justification to teach in any other language than English in the U.S.

To the theorists, and I have heard this first-hand, the U.S. is no longer a melting pot, because "bad things happen when people lose their cultural identities." Instead, we are a salad bowl, where each group retains its identity but co-exists. This basically denies the evolutionary process of coming to America and changing into a new type of citizen, including constitutional responsibilities. This is the basic idea, and I think its what I call "dark spot" thinking, because when the evidence appears that it doesn't work, the idealogues keep pushing for it.

I know that this flies in the face of cultural relativism, but if you want a weak society, vulnerable to tyranny as well as segmented advertising, divide and conquer! And, by emphasizing bilinguialism, you are limiting the exposure to the English language, leading to a smaller vocabulary and in my way of thinking, a smaller capacity to learn from the vast repertoire of English-language information sources.

At the risk of invoking the jingoism and nationalistic thinking that the intelligentsia shuns, I would rather see the American flag around here than Mexico, India, or anywhere else. Not because it reflects my basic ethnic identity (since a part of my background includes people from New Spain, before it was Mexico), but because it represents the best hope out of patterns of tyranny from other failed systems, no matter how flawed the U.S. can be or has been. (Bold added.)

Didn't Martin Luther King dream of a color-blind society? Wasn't that originally part of the point of this non-segragated, equality thing?

Instead, we've winding up with what Weekenders is describing, much to the detrament of our nation and upcomming generations. A house divided can not stand... as true as ever.

What's wrong with being an "All-American-Mutt"? This nation was built of them. I can trace my ancestors back to eight different nationalities so far... what should it matter what those nationalities are? What's wrong with being Italian or African-Mexican or Japanese-Swedish-Russian-whatever. Don't get me wrong, it's great to have family traditions and things we pass down that are specific to our ancestors reminding us where we came from and remembering/honoring the past. That's a good thing. But I to have noticed the emphasise on everything specific to nationality and if you are white skinned or an ethenic mix (like the Mexican-African American kid Week mentioned) you are left out, margenalized, even hated by a growing number of "factions" (for that's how I'm starting to view them as that's how they behave).

It's taken racisim as it has been seen in the fairly recent past (Blacks and other non-white minoritys are bad/evil/to be hated), turned it on it's head (white people are bad/evil/to be hated) and added an ugly twist (if you are an obvious mix of black/white/mexican etc. then you are outcast... you're better than white but not as good as "us".) Each (before and after) was and is a form of racism and each are wrong and destructive.

It truly is divide and conquer. How can our nation stand in the long run if we teach and emphasise everyone into little groups. Fight and bicker amoungt each other based along ethnic lines while ignoring any bigger issues that effect everyone. How is that helpful? How does that help create a stronger, better nation?

Much better would be an emphasise on everyone is a human being with hopes, dreams and feelings. It's okay to be different, but instead of focusing on those differences and defining ourselves soley by that, let's look at the things we have in common and work together to make things better. What we were before or what our ancestors were is great but not more important than the idea that we are all Americans.

But it's not going to happen the way things are going. So much for a color blind society. Thought the idea was to get away from such division and hate... guess not. It's really sad.



Sara

[The Weekenders]

Cynth: This story was in our local papers, on radio and television two years ago when it happend.. If you are saying that its facts are questionable because it only was brought to WND by this outfit, then that's not correct.

Otherwise, I don't quite get your post.

[Whistling Pops]

I think children are most affected by their parents. If a child of European ancestry feels so alienated by recognition of other ethnic groups that the child becomes a white supremacist, I would strongly suggest looking at what that child's parents are like. Good grief!!

I agree.

[Cynth]

Yes, I am saying that this organization has something to gain by promoting Christianity and by portraying Christians as being mistreated. And so their presentation of a story on how Islamic culture is taught to American students would not be coming from a disinterested source. The story may be true or it may be partially true or it may be false. I do not know. But I would need something beyond what you have given for me to give it any consideration.

[The Weekenders]

A similar controversy happened in Fairfield, in Solano County. That was the one I was looking for this morning and found the Byron one instead.
I'll look around.

[Wormdiet]

Well, I am not going to beat Mr. Ed to death Worm. But let's get real, with . . . .

Just for clarity's sake, I agree and sympathize with just about everything you said in that post. But none of it advances the theory you've alluded to earlier. Clear as mud?

[Wombat]

[What's the alternative as you see it, Weeks? Diversity is a fact of life and the 20th century shows that we haven't found a civilised way of handling it. By civilised I mean a way of living with diversity that doesn't involve people coping with diversity simply by adopting a them-and-us attitude. In an increasingly globablised world, I don't see multiculturalism as some sort of liberal luxury but as the only currently available option which directly addresses this unavoidable fact of life; either we find ways of getting along or we are doomed. .

That's just it Wombly. Through the unofficial law of unintended consequences, they are being taught to view the world through multi-racial filters and the easiest way to do so is to create ethnic stereotypes, enhanced by cultural programs that emphasize THE COUNTRY THEY WERE FROM, not the place they are now. I believe that this leads to desires for "pure" blood and identity.

There has to be a balance here. It's very hard to achieve. Who we are as individuals is in part a function both of where we are now and where we are from—all the groups and places. Certainly, where we are now is the thing we all have in common, at least in our local communities.

As I tried to point out before, this leaves multi-racial kids in the dust. I have read personal accounts of a Mexican and African-American mixed kid at Berkeley who was shunned by both groups. It was heart-breaking.

The problem here isn't with multiculturalism but rather with the myth that each of us has one overriding group identity that all others are subservient to. So I would be opposed to any educational theory that emphasised a single most important group identity.

I will take the chances of an eyes open wide exposure to American history, with minimal bi-lingualism, that emphasizes the constitutional culture of the U.S. Despite the British overlay, there is no official ethnic culture of the United States. We sing to the flag, not to the Queen.

And its a lonely place for many. I have given my bilious rant elsewhere that the culture leaves some longing for an ethnic identity and my opinion is that I would infinitely prefer to be a hybrid American than to adopt customs of an old World country, including the prejudices etc etc.

I believe that the new thinking is causing a return to the old thinking it seeks to replace, by emphasizing the VALUE of the other immigrant cultures and languages and implying that its better that they be retained, reinforced and celebrated. And I disagree. With the exception of American Indian languages, I can see no justification to teach in any other language than English in the U.S.

If people who don't understand multiculturalism are teaching it then it will come out wrong. Even understood right it's a hard balancing act but I think an essential one to attempt.

This is really where we part company Weeks. This degree of isolationism might be possible in America but wouldn't be in Australia. I simply have no idea what you would gain by not teaching children foreign languages. Even if your only interest in non-English-speaking countries is to make war on them, you still need reliable translators.

I think it would be a terrible admission of defeat to adopt this policy: isolationism simply isn't learning to get along with the other.

To the theorists, and I have heard this first-hand, the U.S. is no longer a melting pot, because "bad things happen when people lose their cultural identities." Instead, we are a salad bowl, where each group retains its identity but co-exists. This basically denies the evolutionary process of coming to America and changing into a new type of citizen, including constitutional responsibilities. This is the basic idea, and I think its what I call "dark spot" thinking, because when the evidence appears that it doesn't work, the idealogues keep pushing for it.

I think the real problem here lies in thinking we have one group identity. Actually we have lots. Speaking for myself, I'm Australian, of predominantly highland Scots heritage, a musician, an academic and .... so on through the list of worthy, neutral and, I suppose, less than worthy associations. I am all of these things simultaneously. I am none of them mainly or exclusively.

The people I group with in one respect overlap with but aren't identical with those I group with in others. Tolerance isn't a product of valuing each ethnic background (and all the baggage that goes with it) equally but of realising that I could group with absolutely anybody in some crucial respect. Once one realises that we don't have to choose one defining identity, we are free to accept our very diverse selves for what we are; for all that we are, good and bad. The important thing here is not to take any of our identities too seriously.

I know that this flies in the face of cultural relativism, but if you want a weak society, vulnerable to tyranny as well as segmented advertising, divide and conquer! And, by emphasizing bilinguialism, you are limiting the exposure to the English language, leading to a smaller vocabulary and in my way of thinking, a smaller capacity to learn from the vast repertoire of English-language information sources.
At the risk of invoking the jingoism and nationalistic thinking that the intelligentsia shuns, I would rather see the American flag around here than Mexico, India, or anywhere else. Not because it reflects my basic ethnic identity (since a part of my background includes people from New Spain, before it was Mexico), but because it represents the best hope out of patterns of tyranny from other failed systems, no matter how flawed the U.S. can be or has been.

I'm not a crude cultural relativist. I don't think that any single culture is privileged as uniquely best but neither do I think that cultures are just themselves and impervious to criticism. Some cultures do some things well and other things badly. Best to see the good and the bad in all. This obviously isn't easy.

If I'm making this sound easy then that is only because I'm focusing on the core and ignoring the details. In fact it is very hard to implement well. People want two things from a group identity. They want an answer to the question of who they are. They also want a reason to feel good about themsleves without doing any work to earn it. I say that we are all individuals; our real or true group identity is the sum of all our group identities. This of course rejects as misconceived the desire for group identity to furnish us with our sense of self worth. That is easy for the talented but very hard for the disaffected—something extremist groups have exploited cleverly.

A softer way of thinking about it is that there is nothing wrong with our identifying with the achievements of some group(s) we belong to so long as we don't blow up belonging to a point where it trumps individual contribution in importance. So long as we recognise modest individual achievements for the positives they are and don't let ambition outstrip our ability to live up to our self image, we can all take a modest pride in ourselves and the groups we are part of. Why would anybody want or need more?

[The Weekenders]

One quick note to Wombly and others: I never meant that studying non-English languages shouldn't take place in schools and colleges in the US. I meant that for core education and with immigrant students, English should be used. For all the supposed discomfort that it renders immigrant kids, it has worked pretty well for several hundred years, until deep thinkers decided that it didn't. I have given my reasons.

Of course I believe in studying other languages, but not for the purpose of keeping non-English speakers from attaining the language and slowing down their ultimate immersion, that's all.

I think that you gave a very reasoned and balanced approach, Wombly, but I am not sure if that subtlety is attainable when so many of our children are barely making it through school. When it comes to public schools in many parts of our country, especially urban, the patient has been bleeding to death while alternative therapies were attempted, to use a metaphor.

[Sunnywindo]

I was just going to comment that not teaching foreign languages wasn't what Week meant, then stopped to scroll down further to find he'd already gotten around to it himself!

Like he tries (I think) to explain and I tend to agree, there is a new and growing trend... where people who immigrated to America to live once made an effort to learn English (even though we have no official language, English just by default seems to have filled that gap anyway overall) and if they didn't learn it, they usually encouraged children to learn it. While they remembered and celebrated their heritage of where they came from, they also embraced their new county and it's various aspects as a part of their identity.

Now we've got the opposite thing going (most notably at the moment with immigrants from Mexico... so going to use that as an example.) Folks who live here, work here, maybe even vote... but they hold tight to that Mexican heritage above and beyond all else embracing little from their new country of habitation. They proudly refuse to learn English, passing that attitude along to their children... and lucky them, the schools are supporting them in it, not bothering to get these kids coming in immersed in English, not helping them learn it, even teaching them in Spanish in other subjects, encouraging them to hold tight to their past at the expense of even holding on to bad habits and not embracing new things that could help them improve their situation and future. Education isn't encouraged as frequently at home, the kids drop out or fail to pass because learning English and getting a good education wasn't encouraged or demanded at home.

Granted, there are some great, hardworking folks coming out of Mexico who do want to be citizens here in the real sense of the word (am friends with some), but the numbers who would rather create their own little piece of Mexico in the United States seems to be growing rapidly. When we were living in California, I ran into some of these people personally. My hubby, who knows Spanish, worked with some of them and talked (politely) with them and actually told him that the only thing they are here for is the money, no other real interest in this place, it's language, it's heritage... the only interest they took in politics revolved around those who would support them in being here (legally or better yet, illegally) and promise them the most goodies (language support so they don't need to learn English, federal aid, etc.) And if you think that they should try to learn English, assimilate into the country at all, maybe even try to be here legally, you're racist, bad, evil.

I think the definition of multiculturalism is becoming different in some areas of this country than it's generally been perceived on it’s face. Instead of encouraging people to appreciate their heritage and to respect others it's turning into dividing folks up along ethnic lines, encouraging people to embrace their heritage so far as to reject others who don't totally share that heritage and even shun America itself in general. It’s segregation with a new face... divisive and hurtful, serving to further propagate the hate and racism that we supposedly are against... while we as a nation pay such lip service to the virtues and need getting away from that sort of thing. I would wonder about it to (on the face it sounds so bizarre) if I hadn't ran into multiple examples of this sort of thing in person.


This bugs me more than it would have a few years ago.... Reverse racial bigotry hit home with me this last year when we moved into a new neighborhood. (People generally don't like to think of it in those terms... racial bigotry coming from a minority.... it seems to make folks uncomfortable, perhaps because mainstream thinking/teaching generally only focuses on white racism and bigotry. But I can think of no other terms to use, it is what it is no matter what color the skin.)

I'd known about my hubby's experiences in the workplace where he's seen great animosity between Mexican and blacks and even blacks against whites. I’d heard from other people who have seen and had experiences in school or workplace or their neighborhood, but I never thought too long about it... it still seemed a bit distant, someone else's experience. I still had a lot of the "whites are the racist ones, minorities are always the oppressed ones suffering at the hands of whites and all they (the minorites) want is equality in a society that doesn't judge you by the color of your skin" ingrained in my thinking from school.... The idea that you could even have racism going the other way ever at all in the slightest sense (such as minorities towards whites or minorities towards other minorities) was still almost a foreign concept... not mentioned in school, it had always been white people who were racist in the stories and the books, as if it was some kind of disease that only infected white people.

Then I lived a little and interacted with people in the world "out there" in other towns and states, in areas where this sort of thing is a real problem. That opened my eyes a lot.

Then my son tried to make friends in this new neighborhood, a more mixed neighborhood than we have lived in before... this time it really hit home because it hurt my son who didn't understand.

On our particular street, white kids were the minority (more have moved in, still not a majority though). My son is a very friendly person and I’ve always encouraged him to be kind to everyone (I don’t think skin color had even registered much in his mind before other than "wow, their skin is different than mine, how cool!".... I don’t make a bad issue of it so neither does he) and so off he goes wanting to find someone to play with. In the building next door were two African American girls around his age, as sweet and nice as any little girls you’d find. They all became instant best friends.

But the first summer we were here there was also a Mexican family living next door, the mom wasn’t home much and would leave the supervision of her two sons in the hands of friends/relatives who were also Mexican. These two boys and their friends (who... you guessed it, were Mexican) picked on my son terribly and were always telling him and the two little black girls they can’t be playing with each other and when the trio of friends (my son and the two girls) asked why they were told things like “just cause... it’s not right, it’s bad”. Were talking kids under ten here all around.

There was one guy (a friend of the mother’s and a grown “adult”) who frequently hung out with the boys, I suppose to “watch” them.... Oh yeah, he’d watch them... watch them do rotten things. He’d just stand there with a smirk on his face while the boys and their friends would chase off the two little girls and say horrible things to them and my son along with giving me dirty looks when I was outside like I had plague or something. I caught these two boys stealing once and brought it to this fellow’s attention and he just smirked like he was trying not to laugh and refused to say much or do anything. (I know this guy spoke decent English, I’d heard him once when the window was open, he just refused to speak it around or to me much at all.) The mother was no help at all either. I had to keep a very close eye on my son and his friends so they could have some peace while they played.

Thank goodness it only lasted a summer, the boys/family moved and so did that group of hateful kids/adults that was connected to them and it’s been a little more peaceful on the kid front on our part of the street since they did. A month or so after they did and new people moved in a guy who had lived here a while commented to my husband upon seeing my son, his two black friends and another little Mexican girl and boy all playing together that “ that was something he hadn’t seen in a long while. A mix of kids playing so nice like that. It used to be that if you were a white kid around here you wouldn’t have any friends, at least not any nonwhite ones... there were other kids (nonwhite kids) who wouldn’t let it happen.”

I agree a big part of it is parents. If kids aren’t taught better at home, if they don’t have the support and structure that growing kids need then you’re more likely to have such problems. If you don’t teach hate/racism at home by your words and actions, then the kids aren’t as likely to pick up on it. Of course, the schools and groups as Weekenders has been describing are certainly complicating the matter in a growing number of areas and causing more harm than good in far too many places, especially for those kids who don’t have the support at home or are already being taught to despise and shun those who are different by their parents or other relatives. It’s a sad, frightening deal all around.


Sara (who wonders if that post was long and annoying enough to kill the thread)

[Denny]

Sara (who wonders if that post was long and annoying enough to kill the thread)

Naw! We ain't got the attention span to read it... We'll just skip over it.