Education versus Training: What the Universities are Doing to Us

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 5/29/21

            No doubt many hearts were made glad by what Cobb County Chamber of Commerce COO Dana Johnson had to say recently about the need for more students in trade schools. According to the Marietta Daily Journal (May 22/23 Weekend Edition), Johnson told members of the county’s Developmental Authority that “a recent study the Chamber helped fund found rapid growth in healthcare, engineering, construction, and social work.”

            Johnson further asserted that in order to staff businesses in those industries, more students would need to be steered toward trade schools and community colleges rather than to four-year universities. Hallelujah! Business leaders are letting us know that workers are needed and that degrees in political science and other humanities, including English, just aren’t the need of the hour. Hate to say it but political scientists and English teachers like me aren’t what keeps our wheels turning, though we can make them turn better.

            I’m what the educational world calls a “humanities guy.” My study and life work have not been in math and science, manual labor, or the industrial arts, but in language, history, and politics. But even a humanities guy can see what our overemphasis on college education has done to us. It has extolled the college degree and undermined the value and nobility of manual labor and the professional trades.

            As a teenager, my lot was to chop cotton, thin corn, pick cotton, pull corn, feed chickens, haul hay, neuter male calves, fertilize crops by hand, and cut firewood. Except for cotton, I took delight in every task my father or a neighboring farmer assigned me. To this very day the sight of a corn field, the smell of freshly cut hay, or the sight of a wood pile makes me wish I could do it all again now.

            This certainly isn’t the effect that farm labor has had on every country boy who has experienced it. Southern sun can be blistering, soil is often stubborn and unwilling to cooperate, and insects and deer often must be viewed as the deadly enemy they actually are. Still, in my case dirt and the wonderful things it rendered were a joyful mystery.

            Appreciation of the soil and manual labor began to wane in the late 1950s. Post-World War II prosperity led Americans to cities and small towns. Industrialization intensified and universities wooed students with the carrot they called “a degree.” The degree soon became a status symbol even when it didn’t bring much money. Today high schools publicize and celebrate the college-bound but say little about the lad who will enter the construction business with his father or the young lady who will enter nurse’s training or become a hairstylist. This development is sad and unfortunate.

            I could not count the high school senior boys I’ve taught who needed and desired a technical college but were pushed into a liberal arts university by their parents. I doubt that this practice is limited just to educated Cobb County. Perhaps seeing so much of this is what kept me from being disappointed when my artist son Jeff left college his senior year to pursue ranching, rodeo, and bull riding, or when my son Reagan left college his sophomore year to enter construction work and eventually landscaping. Today both of them are happy and blessed.

            But there’s another aspect of higher education that we should note besides its questionable promises of status and success. Like so many corporations that use to exist to make money but have turned to bossing us around on social issues, colleges are indoctrinating. Instead of solely educating, colleges are chasing every fad that comes along - diversity, inclusion, equity, and identity politics - and are turning students into social justice warriors.  Not so our technical colleges, or not yet.

            For 15 years of teaching English at Chattahoochee Technical College, my task was not to solicit or influence student opinions on social justice or politics. In energized classes of all races and ages, students were taught how to write and speak clearly, how to put their best foot forward in a job interview, and how to, as Mark Twain put it, “use the right word and not its second cousin.” Neither my goal nor the college’s was to tell students what to think about anything.

            Not so at the university. Check out the website of any major public or private university. Their aim is for students to think a certain way about race and sexuality.

            Lately the national Chamber of Commerce has been leaning left.  But at least our local Chamber is talking good sense when it tells us we need workers, not coddled college kids.

 

Roger Hines

May 26, 2021

 

                                      False gods that fail us

              Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 5/15/21

            Shortly before Barack Obama’s presidency ended, his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan argued in the Wall Street Journal that “equipping every public school with the ultimate in electronic tools will improve student learning immeasurably.” Duncan opined that “equitable access to a world class education” would be possible only if all schools get on board and technologically arm their schools to the hilt.

            Although Spell Check, Grammar Check, and even Map Quest are often just plain wrong, we should still stand in awe of what technology can do. (Ask those of us who have had open heart surgery.) When Samuel Morse in 1838 completed his world-changing electrical telegraph system and tapped out those famous words, “What hath God wrought?” little could we have imagined the extent to which technology would spread.   

Technology is a blessing but one would be hard pressed to argue that it has increased learning. Education is one thing. Educational tools are another. Access is one thing. Understanding is another. Computers are one thing. Human beings are another. What does it matter how fast a screen can pull up information for students if there is little or no processing – discussing, comparing and contrasting, applying context, questioning – of what is pulled up? It appears that Secretary Duncan has moved as far away from Socrates as one could possibly move. Not to mention the old saw, “True education is Abe Lincoln on one end of a log and famous teacher Mark Hopkins on the other.”

            Technology is a false god. It towers over us and we bow to it. It beckons and we rush to it, whether it’s our cell phones, screens in a restaurant, or screens at the gas pump, for heaven’s sake. Since tech now pervades our world, it only makes sense to employ it in the classroom. Well, not so fast says Stanford University researcher Larry Cuban whose research has found “no clear and substantial evidence of students increasing their academic achievement as a result of using educational technology.”

            For record keeping, student information, and other necessary school minutia, technology has been a God-send. For instruction it has not. Indeed, Cuban’s words remind me of what a college freshman said to me several years ago: “We’re getting pretty tired of power point but nobody ever gets tired of a good teacher or a lively class discussion.” That student was 18.

            But there are other false gods, one particularly to which so many bow and on which so many depend. It is the god of government. FDR and LBJ would cheer, but Jefferson and Reagan would rumble in their graves to learn of the size and scope of government in America today. The coercion that House Democrats call “For the People Act” (HR 1) is exactly what America’s Founders and others were trying to escape. Among other equally incredible measures, HR 1 would undermine and weaken state election laws.

Here’s how. It includes an automatic voter registration for public assistance applicants. In essence and in effect it would federalize the administration of national elections. HR1 isn’t hard to find. Every citizen should read it.

            Anyone who supports these measures worships government. They apparently lean on authority without question and would never be heard to say, “He’s not heavy, he’s my brother.” Instead, they would hand over their brother to Big Brother. As for the Georgia legislature’s effort to remedy election fraud, watch as Atlanta’s CEO’s (who haven’t read HR1) continue to line up and threaten to move to Timbuktu unless the recently passed election law is changed.

            Worshippers of government don’t care if boys are allowed to join girls’ sports teams, if Congress can be protected by a substantial fence but citizens can’t, if gun ownership is severely restricted, or if schools and universities cram critical race theory down our kids’ throats. They also don’t care if the USA goes the way of Chile, a nation that was one of the wealthiest nations in South America until 2013 when a new leftist government pushed the “spread the wealth” gospel, creating “equality” for sure (equal poverty), but plunging the nation into an economic free fall.

            There is a kinship of these two false gods. Pervasive technology has diminished human touch; pervasive government has diminished localism. Technology has increased fake friendship and loneliness; government has increased centralized power and dependency. The purpose of government, American style, has been to serve its people. We best beware of, yea totally resist, HR 1 as it heads to the U.S. Senate and we might consider what screens are doing to our health and to our kids and grandkids in school.

 

Roger Hines

May 5, 2021 

           

 

   America is Getting Back to Normal and That’s Sad and Scary

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 5/1/21

            The American experience, if dated from 1776, will be 245 years old in July of 2021. Two and a half centuries are not a long time. Compared to most nations of the world, our nation is still a babe in arms.

            Ours was a genuine revolution. Unlike the failed French Revolution or the Communist Revolution of Russia that simply swapped one set of tyrants for another, the American Revolution centered on ideas and principles that the Old World, including merry old England, knew little to nothing about. Those ideas included, above all, individual liberty and representative democracy. No more kings, queens, dukes, potentates, or ruling families. Americans would choose their leaders. They would live under written law, not spoken edicts. That written law would allow farmers, frontiersmen, small businessmen, surveyors, ministers, and every other stripe of commoner to serve in legislative halls.

            These political ideas and principles of the early Americans were not totally new. The Greeks, actually the first westerners, lit the first glimmers of democracy. The amount of freedom that Englanders enjoyed was dependent upon whichever ruling family was in power. What happened in Philadelphia in 1776 was primarily under the leadership of self-dependent, freedom-loving men, not royalty.  

            The short history of self-government is immensely important. Its pinnacle and its best illustration is still the radical, revolutionary action of America’s founders. What they birthed and cradled was not normal. What their parents had fled was normal. Historically self-rule has not been the norm, but the exception. Oppressive government and tyranny have been the norm.

            Yet, America’s current prevailing culture objects to saying that America is an exceptional place. Barack Obama explicitly stated, “I believe in American exceptionalism just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism.” Those are weasel words and they reflect the view held by leaders in politics, education, entertainment, sports, and corporate America. To them the claim of exceptionalism is xenophobic. Their favorite song is not “America the Beautiful,” but “We are the World.”

            Unlike Henry Ford, the Vanderbilts, and others, today’s corporatists are trans-nationalists. America is just one of many nations with whom they do business. Corporate CEO’s shame us for being “racists” while doing business with China where freedom and love hardly abound. What hypocrisy!

Today we have a national administration that puts America down and makes it clear that its aim is to return to the normal, the pre-America normal of Big Brother, the governmental tyranny of the Old World. Forget America’s rugged, individualist, frontier spirit. It’s all about the collective Village now, not the villagers, so get with the program.

President Biden and Vice-President Harris will not get off their rant that we are a racist nation, that our racism is systemic, and that they intend to transform/reset all of us, especially our cops whom they’re demonizing because of a few bad apples. Even police chiefs around the nation are shilly-shallying, refusing to defend their cops while caving to the Left’s tiresome script. Watch the next time a chief of police appears before a microphone just after a shooting.

 Forget that slavery was abolished, that Republicans (not Democrats) are chiefly responsible for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Forget that White “racist” Americans elected and re-elected a Black president. Laughably, President Biden calls for unity while showing scorn for cops and evangelical Christians. Call it statism, centralism, or whatever you like, his party is moving the nation from capitalism to socialism. ($200 billion for pre-schooling?) His party is calling for more government power and regulation, higher taxes, and a curtailment of our federal system. In other words Democrats seek to reclaim the normal, that which characterized the world before 1776 and still does in huge corners of the world today. The growth of the state is upon us.   

            So is unchecked violence. Black on Black crime is off the charts and the Biden administration will not address it. Neither will it address the Leftist riots or the fact that cops in large numbers are retiring or resigning daily.

            As for unity, there is no middle ground when it comes to issues like abortion. One side must win and one lose, or we will continue to fight for decades to come. Child sacrifice was practiced in the Old World. Today we sacrifice babies to the god of convenience or “women’s rights.” What’s the difference when dead is dead?

            No, history’s normal has not been pretty. With all her shortcomings, America like no other nation altered that normal. Too bad that liberals want to return to the old ways. The specter of the liberals’ big state looms over us, darker than ever. We had better resist, and fast.

 

Roger Hines

4/28/21

           

           

           

           

           

 

                Covid and California: a Picture of our Future?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/17/21

            A serious but comparatively brief struggle with Covid, thanks to a great doctor and a nurse, was for me just as mental as it was physical. The physical struggle wasn’t easy. Chills, nausea, constant twitching pain and perspiring throughout the night never are.

Even so, it wasn’t the physical side of the struggle that made me toss and turn at night. Medicine eventually assuaged that. Nor was it worry. It was the steady pondering of what Covid, or the handling thereof, is doing to us. The hectoring and condescension from medical experts has been bad enough but, more importantly, political leaders have injected us with fear, violated our constitutional freedoms, and weakened the rugged American spirit of which the typical 20-year-old knows so little. It wasn’t this way with polio.

My earliest knowledge of the children killer came from my parents, the radio, and daily newspapers. The Truman administration addressed polio though “shelter in place” was unheard of. Quarantining was urged and some shutdowns existed, but consult any studies of polio from 1949 to 1952 (its peak year) and you’ll find that the terrifying disease was managed primarily through a private system of health professionals and parental responsibility. Caution was advised by Truman himself, but especially by local medical leaders everywhere. Not everything was run from D.C. back then.

In 1950 when a younger brother of mine contracted diphtheria, my family was quarantined by the county health department. For neither diphtheria nor polio, however, were widespread lockdowns required. A cloud of concern hung over the nation, but the closing down of the economy, the destruction of livelihoods, and restraints on public worship were also unheard of.

With Covid, political leaders have essentially followed a society-wide plan of lockdowns.  During the 4-year polio epidemic individual liberty, free enterprise, and livelihoods survived. This cannot be said of our management of Covid. Dashed is still the word for many Americans’ lives. Our solution has been unabashed socialism. Before handing out stimulus checks, it would have been wise to consider the bad things that a stimulus can stimulate. By many accounts hospitals are having a banner year, thanks to the CARES Act.

 Covid has been tragic, but neither wellness nor renewed faith in government will ever flow from unilateral decrees, restriction of personal movement, or blatant attacks on freedom of worship. I fear a changed America and a new age of tyranny far more than I fear disease, death, or dying.

A changed America – one given to fear and acquiescence – is dawning primarily because we have listened only to celebrity medical experts (repeatedly) while ignoring the 50,000 medical doctors and researchers who signed the Great Barrington Declaration. Penned in October of 2020 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts this declaration advised strategy far less suppressive than that of the celebrity experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci. It was co-authored by medical scientists and epidemiologists from Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, not exactly conspiratorial fringe institutions. If you’ve never heard of the Declaration, it could be because CNN, MSNBC, and the liberal national newspapers cancelled it, only one example of suppressed news these days.

As with Covid and medicine, so with immigration and California. Both have been used as political tools. From the end of WWII to 1992 Californians voted for only one Democratic president. In 1980 California produced a very conservative president, Ronald Reagan. Despite his conservatism Reagan ignited, surely unwittingly, California’s movement from a conservative to a liberal state. By signing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Reagan afforded amnesty and a path to citizenship to 3 million illegals. Who’da thunk that RR himself just two years later would sign  another law requiring hospitals to give free care regardless of immigration status?

Of course illegals came and California changed just as, to the joy of Democrats, the nation is changing now. Idyllic California is no more. According to National Review magazine an exodus is occurring because “California is a mess economically, socially, educationally, and culturally.” Should we not ask why? The answer is governance and the evil aims and methods behind it. Just as the answer for Covid has been centralism and control, so has the governance of California, for two decades now.

My nights of troubled pondering centered not on our collective pain and suffering from Covid but on the acquiescence of American citizens to things most un-American: tyrannical governors, arbitrary rules and mandates, and the scary, increasing, mistaken belief that Big Brother knows best.

Sickness is far easier to overcome than tyranny, and tyranny is what we seem to be falling for. The good news is that within two years voters just might demand a great correction. Let us so pray. What we call America is at stake.

 

Roger Hines

4/15/21

 

 

 

                                                             Easter Revisited

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/3/21

No, the word Easter, though mentioned in the New Testament, is not really a Christian term. Like the Christmas tree, Easter eggs are of no Christian origin or significance. The ancient Druids of the British Isles worshiped trees, a practice that was a far cry from what the babe in the Bethlehem manger would eventually teach. Even so many Christians adorn trees at Christmas and marvel at their beauty.

 Tales of the origins of the word Easter are numerous though most lexicographers follow the account of the Anglo-Saxons whose deity, Eastre, was the goddess of spring and fertility. Whether our word Easter comes from the Anglo-Saxon “Eastre” or the Greek work “Pascha” (meaning Passover) is still debated. But no reason for despair. Although Christianity has chiefly been cradled and given to the world by Europe and North America, those two continents have also never contested the pagan names of the days of the week. For just a few examples, Sunday and Monday were named for the sun and the moon; Tuesday for the one-handed god Tiu; Wednesday for Woden; Thursday for the god of war Thor; and Friday for the pagan goddess Fria. Even Saturday has its origins in the mythological god Saturn and the licenscious festival, Saturnalia, that honored him. No respectable Christian, Jew, or Muslim would have been found at a Saturnalia festival. 

Suffice it to say that our words, customs, and even the names of celebrations we hold dear are often mixed with monotheistic, polytheistic, and pagan terms and narratives. Such is the nature of language. Life is stubborn, even the life of words. Life wants to continue, hence the life of pagan words that have spilled over into various religions, sometimes causing confusion or leading people to question their faith.

That confusion or questioning need not be fatal. When it comes to the Christian celebration of Easter, let us just say that Easter morphed its way into Christianity and does not constitute a grafting. Think of Santa Claus. Most Westerners love the old guy but many Christians do regret that because of the way we extol him, Santa has taken a great deal attention off of the One whose birth is being celebrated.

Easter is quite different from Christmas, though Biblically they both center on miracles. One miracle was that a virgin bore a child; the other miracle regarded what happened to this child and why.

The great faith that came from this child is today the world’s largest religion with over 2 billion adherents. Those 2 billion are divided into Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox which obviously leads to the conclusion that Christians do a lot of disagreeing with each other. Most of that disagreeing is not over essentials of the faith. Those essentials all regard the person of Christ. They are His virgin birth, sinless life, atoning death, and literal resurrection.

All of my life I’ve heard that whenever you get two Baptists together, you’ll have three opinions. How not, what with American Baptists, National Baptists, Southern Baptists, Regular Baptists, and several others? Consider United Methodists, Wesleyan Methodists, etc. Lutherans are divided into almost as many groups as Baptists. The same is true of Pentecostals.  Even the Orthodox have their divisions as well. Not so the Catholics who are immensely hierarchical.

What does unite Christians is the deeply consoling fact of Jesus’ resurrection. An Apostle and a converted journalist have best argued the truth of the resurrection event. The Apostle put it this way: “If Christ be not raised then is our preaching in vain and our faith is also vain and you are yet in your sins.”

The journalist put it this way, referring to the Apostle: “Nobody knowingly and willingly dies for a lie. Apart from the resurrection there’s no good reason why skeptics such as Paul would have been converted and died for their faith.”

The Apostle Paul had been a terrorist who oversaw the persecution and murder of Christians. The journalist was the Yale-educated Chicago Tribune legal editor and atheist Lee Strobel. Strobel was sent to Kentucky to learn about those “hillbillies” who were arguing that creationism should be taught in their kids’ school. Instead of finding crazy, close-minded Christians, Strobel found kind Christian people who were even willing to hear him out when he ask for time to give his views. Both the “hillbillies” and the joyful spirit of his Christian wife led Strobel to study Scripture and denounce his atheism, believe in Christ, and write several books on Christian faith.

It was his deep study of the resurrection that brought him conclusively to Christian faith. Strobel says, “The resurrection truly changes everything.”

Easter, then, cries out that old Death is not the end. Give Paul or the many books of Strobel a reading.

 

Roger Hines

3/31/21

           

 

                    We Hold These Truths … to be Offensive

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/20/21

            Seventeen centuries before Jefferson asserted in The Declaration that certain truths were self-evident, Cicero remarked, “If truth were self-evident, there would be no need for eloquence.”

            Nor for debate nor even for courts of law, one might add. But we understand what Jefferson meant. You won’t find me quibbling too much with either one of these intellectual giants, but truth often has to be searched out, hammered out, and explained. Despite my admiration for Jefferson, I’m with Cicero.

            Today in America truth is on the scaffold. It always is, but dear Lord, how many more biological and sociological truths are about to be denied by the political/cultural left? I started to use the word “discarded,” but it’s impossible to discard truth. It can be scoffed at or ignored, but not discarded, no matter how much we dislike it. Truth stands, though often alone.

            One of America’s greatest poets, James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), wrote. “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide / In the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side.” But what can a dead, white poet offer us?  Although Lowell was addressing the evil of slavery when he penned those words, he is just too yesterday for today’s youth and for the publishers of their literature books. Lowell is essentially canceled.

            I rue that fact because every single day we learn that yet another truth is being canceled, replaced with such lies as: we are not just male or female; spanking injures a child’s psyche; capitalism is inherently racist; life doesn’t begin at conception; all whites are privileged.

            How intellectually vacuous and soft we have become. How tenderly we treat our children, thus retarding their movement into responsible adulthood. In high school, at age 17, I was a substitute school bus driver. Two other senior boys were full time school bus drivers. Not even in rural areas would that happen today. Why not? Because of the cultural softening of everything from parenting to schooling to policing. Because of the mystique we’ve built around teenagers.

In the words of feminist writer Christina Sommers, “Our helping culture is eroding self-confidence.” Yes, we lavish children with praise and go gentle with correction. We send grief brigades to our schools in the wake of the smallest tragedy. We’ve replaced “Know thyself” with “Esteem thyself.”   Sommers, parting company with her feminist sisters, rejects “the triumph of the therapeutic.”

            Oh, for a modern Martin Luther to nail truth to the cathedral door of our modern culture. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal is now requiring its reporters to refrain from using the words, “illegal immigrants,” words that Senator Schumer, President Obama, and Vice President Biden were using barely a decade ago.  But no more. Now eschewing truth, they have succumbed to a lie. Soon shoplifters will be called “non-buyers.” If truth offends it must be reworded.

Consider the term “white privilege” and the following name pairs, Whites on the left and Blacks on the right: Tom Brady/Lebron James; Taylor Swift/Beyonce; Peter Trottier/Ben Carson; William Faulkner/James Baldwin. We could go on and on in all fields of work, pairing successful Whites with successful Blacks. My good doctor, Peter Trottier, is not successful because he is White and Ben Carson is not successful because he is Black. Both men are successful because they dreamed, then hit the road, and achieved their dream. Neither viewed himself as a victim.

            The American dream puts the lie to white privilege. How privileged were Lincoln and Truman, or Obama and Clinton for that matter? All four of these originally non-rich Americans chased their dream and caught it. Sadly and ironically Obama and Clinton have since taken the side of those who cry white privilege, racism, and victimhood. Both of them know better.

            In the recent past “offensive” was a word employed for scatological humor, vulgarity, and profanity. Today it’s used to describe Dr. Seuss. Dear God. “Victim” in the recent past referred to the down and out. Today it’s used to describe Meghan and Harry. Some claim politics and politicians are the incubator of all such cry-babying. I say it’s parents and the university.

            C.S. Lewis wrote, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue.” Lewis understood truth.

            And so did James Russell Lowell. He ended his beloved poem with, “Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the Truth alone is strong / Though her portion be the scaffold and upon the throne be wrong / Yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown / Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.”

            For such we best pray, especially when cultural relativism is the prevailing belief.           

 

Roger Hines

March17, 2021

              

             

           

 

        Black History Month Matters and Should not be Sullied

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3-9-21

            During the month of February this newspaper rightly celebrated Black History Month. In the words of the editor, “To recognize Black History Month, the MDJ asked 20 community leaders how they will celebrate and what BHM means to them.” The paper went on to draw testimony day by day from Black leaders in Marietta and Cobb County.

            Reading these testimonies was uplifting. Permit me to describe two growth experiences which caused me to revel in them.

            I was ten. I always beat my younger brother and older sisters to the graveled road to await the school bus. One particular morning appeared to be a normal school day. For instance, looking west toward Forest, Mississippi I observed once again the ten or so Black teenagers and small children walking the two miles from the edge of town to their school which was a shack just beyond our house. The shack, badly needing paint and repair, was a mysterious place. I peeped into its windows on many a Saturday to find it almost bare of furniture and supplies.

            But this spring morning wasn’t normal. Fronting the group of Black students was a new child who had never been with them. Walking far ahead of the group, he appeared to be my age. My siblings and I never spoke to these young people nor they to us. Instead they and we looked down as they passed by. But this morning when the new child reached our mailbox, with a bright smile on his face he chirped, “Ya’ll rich, ain’tcha! Ya’ll got cows!”

            “Nuh uh,” I replied. “Those are Mr. McMurphy’s.” Before we could continue talking, all of the others rushed forth and one of the teenage girls pushed the excited lad forward. Truth is they and we were not supposed to talk to each other. Believe me.

            Because of the joyful innocence on my potential friend’s face and its deep contrast to that of his friends, I began to wonder why I rode a bus to a good school in town while he walked to a shack out in the country.

            Twelve years later my career path and an internal convicting spirit had led me to George Washington Carver Jr. High School. A white man surrounded by all Black co-workers, the finest of teachers, I wallowed in their excellence and their dedication to improving the lives of their charges. Science teacher Ernestine Ross, Diana Ross’ first cousin, kept me up-to-date on the emerging Supremes during our common planning period. Little Emmett Jones, one of my seventh graders, looked exactly like the child who had stopped to talk to me twelve years before. At Carver my awareness of injustice grew.

            Recently Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, Harold Melton, announced that he was retiring. This news catapulted my mind to Melton’s 10^th grade year when he was a student of mine at Wheeler High School. Intentionality was writ large on Melton’s face. One of only a very few Black students in the school at the time, Melton was characterized by teachers as “a prince of a guy.” A reunion with Melton a few years ago when he spoke at a Chattahoochee Tech graduation was a great thrill.

            A child my age whose name I never knew, a splendid collection of Black educators who exhibited personal and professional excellence and a former student showed me that Black citizens who comprise hardly 13% of the nation deserve to be recognized and celebrated, particularly those who have contributed so much.

            Sadly though, we sully race relations and halt progress when we fall for divisive expressions such as “systemic racism” and “the bigotry of Whiteness.” Sulliers like Al Sharpton have lots of explaining to do, given the success and good will modeled by Blacks like Clarence Thomas, Alveda King, Ben Carson, Herman Cain, Candace Owens, and Harold Melton.  Materially, Sharpton isn’t doing too badly himself.       

School systems, corporations (listening, Coca Cola?), and universities are requiring workshops and training on “overcoming whiteness,” and “how to be less white.” Such preachy wrongheadedness divides people. The cure for liberal guilt is for liberals to take action themselves, instead of foisting indoctrination workshops on those of us who have fought injustice all of our lives, but just happen to be conservative or white.

            One wonders how a CEO, a school system superintendent, or a university president got to where they are if they could fall for reverse bigotry. It’s past time to let go of shaming. Let’s all just determine to meet people of a different race and make friends. It’s always time to honor, in a dignified way as this newspaper has done, our Black fellow citizens. Finger pointing and guilt-laden videos we can do without. 

 

Roger Hines

3/3/21