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But the driver was immediately suspended after the accusation, and the story made national news. This is a good thing, no? I mean, there will always be jerks, but when everyone stands up and agrees that the jerks are not OK, well, that's real progress.
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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If anything you could almost construe it as good news. Racists are the minority, and whenever they rear their ugly heads, the majority is beating them back down.
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I just don't understand how someone in the US in this day and age can believe that he or she could do this and not have it become a scandal.
I mean, yes, I understand that these kids were probably disenfranchised in many ways and perhaps 50 years ago wouldn't have been able to make a substantive protest, but gee whiz -- internet? Radio and TV networks salivating for a story like this?
I expect this bus driver to believe Hoover is still US President and to be astonished at the newfangled "talkies" movie phenomenon.
Come on. Thank goodness that this is pretty much automatically a scandal now. And somebody, please, get this bus driver a current newspaper and a subscription to The World Has Moved On Weekly.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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The way I read the article, nothing happened until the parents went to the school board. They complained to the principal first who did nothing.
But yes, it is a good thing that the head of the School Board suspended the driver immediately.
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
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When I was in elementary school, we had to sit in the order we got on the bus, from the back to the front. If the neighborhoods were separated by race and the black neighborhood was the first one, then I could see a driver implementing a similar system without realizing the implications. But, you wouldn't expect the afternoon ride to end up the same way. That and the different levels of crowding make it clear that this driver can't fall back on that explanation.
Like CT, I can't figure out what the guy was thinking.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by andi330: The way I read the article, nothing happened until the parents went to the school board. They complained to the principal first who did nothing.
That's just it -- and if the school board hadn't done anything, the parents would have had other recourse, even if they were quite poor and disenfranchised. Of course, the real problem is that the incident happened at all, and I don't mean to diminish that. It is obviously the important point.
But still -- a few decades ago, and the principal could have ignored it, the school board could have ignored it, and the political leadership of the state could have ignored it. And with only three major national networks, the story could have been crushed out completely from the get-go.
Now, though, just about all public libraries have internet access. I can't imagine that the story wouldn't have been a hot topic once it hit the right (easily accessible) channels, and it was bound to.
I just can't imagine how completely self-embroiled and out of touch an adult would have to be in order not to anticipate that.
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