From today’s Interrogatory of Redneck Nation author Michael Graham:

Lopez: How are we becoming a redneck nation? Graham: Just look at the list above. Having fled these attitudes among my rural southern neighbors, I know live in a modern, liberal America where Ivy League colleges are building segregating housing because “race matters.” I actually heard one modern defender of segregated public schools (blacks-only academies) say “black people learn differently from white people.” Gee, I haven’t heard that since I was 12 — from a klan member!

[Rod here] When I was in my small-town public school in the 1970s, there were five sections in each elementary school class. Three were all-black, and two were predominantly white, with the six academically most promising black students from the all-black classes put in with the white kids. The mostly-white classes got white teachers for all but one subject each day, and it was the reverse for the all-black classes. Of course this was segregationist, but no one complained. In fact, had things gone differently, there would have been lots of trouble from both black and white parents. The black parents would have complained because their kids were being taught by white teachers, and the white parents would have complained in part because of the incompetence of some of the black teachers. I’m thinking in particular of Mrs. V.C. Woods, an elderly black woman who was tenured, and who taught my fifth-grade social-studies course. Actually, I taught the course. Mrs. Woods figured out that I was the best reader in the class, so she let me recite the day’s lesson while she slept in the back of the classroom. Every day. You had to live with this, because the social unrest that would have resulted from trying to get rid of her would have been catastrophic. But I’ve thought from time to time about the black kids who had her as a homeroom teacher, which is to say, for most of their subjects. The year after I was out of her class, she was caught locking the door to her classroom after lunch, and allowing the kids to watch soap operas while she slept (she had requisitioned a television under the pretense of allowing them to watch “educational” programming). Why didn’t the black parents complain? Was it enough for them that their children were taught by one of their own? The only education those kids got was in the cynicism of race politics in public schooling. Sad.