Little Rock
Aziz P
Today is the 50th anniversary of Little Rock. Above is the famous photo by Will Counts (above), the caption to which reads:
Elizabeth Eckford, followed and taunted by an angry crowd after she was denied entrance to Little Rock Central High School, September 4, 1957. The girl in the light dress behind her is Hazel Bryan. Will Counts/Arkansas History Commission.
Vanity Fair has an indepth article on the lives of those two women, which makes for a fascinating tale of racism and redemption in its own right. And yet, the story doesn't quite have a happy ending:
Central High School looks as imposing as ever, but over the past 50 years, its innards have changed unimaginably: the school is now more than half black. It's all misleading, of course, because Central is really two different schools, separate and unequal, under one roof. The blacks go to different classes, sit on separate sides of the cafeteria, have different, and far lower, levels of performance and expectations.
There's a long way to go before the Cosby Show/Different World reality becomes mainstream.
The valuation of education, stable two-parent homes, and a recognition that even a bad history is still "history" - an important lesson and a warning, but not an anchor dragging you down unless you chose to let it, would help get the ball rolling in the right direction.
Maybe Hillary will come up with a government program or two to help in this area.
To paraphrase WWI ace, it ain't courage if you ain't scared.
What Elizabeth Eckford showed that day was nothing but the kind of courage one rarely sees nowadays.
Pure guts. Wow.
I know we tend to disagree on many things, but I just wanted to thank you for posting this story - which I wouldn't have seen otherwise (VF is not on my reading list).
I've always been fascinated by the power of photographs, how they immortalize a single moment in time and summarize complex issues. The photo is perhaps one of the most important ever captured, and its story - and what followed it - fascinating.
Thank you, Aziz.
Hopefully the programs aren't separate, but equal.
incidentally dean, my last sentence was explicotly alluding to the fact that there is more than one kind of progress still ahead. In fact thats the very reason I invoked Cosby Show and Different World, two shows by Cosby that sought to change African American thinking about what is mainstream, what is desirable, what is pride. A Different World may well have been one of the most inspiring, best shows on television, ever. And not just because the geek got the girl.
Though that counts for a lot!
Sadly, way too many social "experts" of all colors derided Dr. Cosby's shows as "inauthentic". He wasn't trying to be "authentic"; he was trying to envision an ideal.
Yet I think even the claims of "inauthentic" are false. An awful lot of African-American families were living the lives seen in those shows.
actually it does... the entire message of the show in a nutshell. education = happiness and wealth.
I disagree. I mean, I know this is a trivial point; and it will also demonstrate that I spent way too much time watching that show. (What can I say? I identify with geeks, and Jasmine Guy is very much my type.)
But I think the message is more complex than that. When Whitley graduates with a relatively low-value degree in art history, she has a struggle ahead; but she has confidence that she can handle it (for the most part). And Dwayne, who had a much more valuable math/engine degree, still had a lot of struggling ahead. The last year or so of the show, with their life after school, showed not happiness and wealth; rather, it was closer to self-respect and opportunity and learning to make the most of it.
And I think that's important. A friend of mine, an African-American who came of age right around that time or a little before, tells me he was bombarded with "education = happiness and wealth" messages all through school; and when he got that education, he was shocked that the wealth didn't just follow. He honestly feels the educators over-promised; and he says some of his friends just gave up when that over-promise fell through. He says that "education = opportunity and a head start, but no guarantees" would've been a more honest message, one he had to learn the hard way and is now trying to teach his kids.
And that was the message of the show, taken as a whole. And that made a nice bookend with "The Cosby Show", because they were really stories of the same couple at different stages of their lives. If you watched and paid attention, you could tell that the Huxtables started out every bit as rough as the Waynes, maybe moreso; and yet three decades later, they had built on their opportunities that their education made, and had made most of their goals become real.
Yeah, about as often as there have been sympathetic openly atheist characters in mainstream television -- speaking of which, who here can name the only one in recent history?
It's all in the context. And TCS and ADW didn't attempt to question those prejudices and bigotries for the simple sorry reason that the maintenance and reinforcement of those prejudices are what keeps everyone's costs for resources, manufacturing, construction, and infrastructure so much lower -- in exchange for men's well-being, safety, health, and lives.
The bottom line is that we deliberately indoctrinate boys and men into becoming willing self-sacrificers so that our high standard of living will remain relatively inexpensive.
And the black community is still FUBAR to the degree it is most of all because of the femelitism-based State pogrom against fatherhood. How much did TCS and ADW do about raising consciousness in those areas?
Not one bit, and now you all know why. But it remains the fact that it is femelitism, not racism, that both today and back then at the time of these programs' original creation and broadcasting was and is by far the greatest threat against and danger to black children's interests and subsequently those of the communities they will create -- as demonstrated by the nature of the communities they have already created.
But never mind, what do I know; I'm just an angry white man.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.