Car Jacked
It goes without saying that Martin Luther King Jr's legacy is a victory for all people. He fought against an evil that made it legal to arbitrarily deny one group of Americans the rights offered by a free society. He is worthy of the praise of all Americans. It's a shame his universal message is reduced to provincialism by little people every year on his birthday.
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin whines that because so many blacks and Latinos can't find jobs after high school (during a time of near full employment and when America is importing workers by the millions) this shows that Dr. King's work is not done. What nonsense. It is sad that this woman probably has no idea that she is belittling such a proud legacy by attaching it to such wrong-headed gripes. The civil rights movement was not a communist revolution. It's objectives were not to make all people equal economically or intellectually or spiritually or athletically. It's objective was to make all people equal in regards to the opportunities available to them in this great country. It succeeded brilliantly. And because of that we should all rejoice in a job well done and ignore the little people who will try to drag the leader of this great movement down to the level of their petty politics.
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2 comments:
One could conclude from your comments that you believe the public school system offers each child that it's charged to serve an equal opportunity to succeed.
That is correct, sir.
To anticipate the criticism of this position let me say that the skills necessary to graduate from high school are so minimal that untrained parents home schooling their kids can meet these requirements. What this shows is that a particular public school is not a determinant for success. Therefore, poor schools are not a barrier to achievement. (I would like to qualify this by saying where a school is a barrier, it is because the discipline is so poor that the disfunction of the community is allowed to enter in and disrupt the ability of students to learn. In this case, the student would be better off away from the school and these distractions) Public schools have failed, for the most part, not because of a disparity in the schools themselves, but because of the disparity of the communities they operate in. This is why increased spending does not translate into improved results. The problem is rarely the school, but the homes from which the kids come. (There are some qualifiers to this that can be fleshed out if need be)
Success is a personal choice. A school is simply an assistant to the person choosing to succeed. And it has no power over the person choosing to fail. A bad school (or community) is radically different from a law that strips people of opportunity.
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