This is the sort of thing people are going to have to get over:
The reunion Saturday is only for those who graduated from Washington High School before it opened its doors to black students in the fall of 1969.Some black leaders say the all-white reunion is sad and painful evidence that 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed school segregation, some things have not changed all that much in this community on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
“It’s just as divided as it’s ever been,” said Leon Johnson, a black political activist who worked behind the scenes in Somerset County in 1960s. “The old folks did a good job of teaching the young ones, of teaching them the old system.”
Wait a minute. Let’s assess: 1) Let’s say the class of 1952 wants to hold a reunion and there were no blacks at the school in 1952. Why would black people attend the Class of ‘52 reunion? My mother graduated from an all-black, pre-integration high school. Can you guess what color the class reunion attendees were? Good grief.
2) Things have changed. The Brown case sought to outlaw government-sanctioned discrimination, and it accomplished that goal. Alarmist, America-is-still-racist articles like this make me queasy. Pardon me.
In a way, I feel bad that people feel bad about this, but I couldn’t care less if pre-integration high school classes want to have their own high school reunions. Black people hold their own events all the time. You can’t cry foul when the other guy does it, too.
And I don’t care if the reasons or intentions for doing so are vastly different. (They’re usually quite similar.) We all operate under the same rules; there isn’t one code of conduct for this group and another code of conduct for that group. But, unfortunately, some groups like to claim preferences based on the color of their skin. If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out!
Reading further in the article, we learn that the reunion is sponsored by a private group, not the school:
Organizers call the reunion a “Grand Homecoming” for graduates from the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. The event, last held in 1999, draws about 700 alumni. It is independently organized and is not affiliated with the public school system.
According to our Constitution, we are free to privately assemble. (Hear that, Jesse Jackson?) If the assembly is based on race, so be it. Look, if people want to hang out with their “own kind,” they may do so. This is one of the consequences of living in a free society, folks. If you want to be told who to associate with and what to say, move to Canada.
Next, we get to the heart of the matter: money:
H. DeWayne Whittington, a 1948 graduate of what was then called Crisfield Colored High School, eventually became the first black superintendent of Somerset County schools, in 1988. He won a lawsuit against the county four years later when it did not renew his contract, and the system was forced to name a school for him.Whittington said he is less irritated by the Grand Homecomings than he is by the distribution of scholarship money raised at the event. A total of $9,500 has been awarded in 19 scholarships, but only to children of alumni who graduated before integration…
The separate reunions are a symptom of a lack of black political leadership in the county, Whittington said. No black politicians have pressed for a stop to the practice.
Whittington is misguided and wrong-headed, and his quotes reek of self-pity and sour grapes. I don’t know the man’s heart, and some of his quotes may have been excluded or taken out of context to fit the reporter’s framing of the story. But what I read, I don’t like. This is the sort of stuff you say in private to other blacks, not in a nationally-run article.
If blacks in that town are envious and angry, they need to use that energy to create something instead of complaining about what they don’t have. They need to organize bigger and better reunions for themselves and get the word out. Hey, they can even hire me to write a few snazzy press releases and promotion materials.
Whenever I’m feeling envious toward others, I don’t complain about what I don’t have and how unfair life is and how racist white people are. I do something about it. I turn the energy of that negative emotion into something I can use. Even if I accomplish a small goal or two, I’ve done my best. Envy, I have no use for.
That, in a nutshell, is my advice to people still crying “Racism!” in 2004 America.
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Read Parts I and II of my Brown v. Board of Education columns.
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La Shawn,
I agree with your premise, however, I am curious as to why the cut-off is set at the time it is. Certainly if the school’s graduating class of say, 1952, wanted to hold a reunion, invariably it would only consist of Whites. But, if you are holding a “Grand Reunion” why only the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s? Perhaps there IS something to the complaint. On the other hand, perhaps they just want to have a 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s reunion with no racism intended.
This is the problem when everything in life is viewed through the lens of racial politics, you tend to LOOK for the motive of racism in things like this even if the event sponsors had no intention of being racially exclusive.
Nevertheless, you are correct in your assertion about the right of free association. Since the event is not government sponsored, they have the right to set it up in whatever way they choose.
If the complaining gentleman is so concerned about the motive behind the event perhaps he could set up a “Grand Reunion” of 70’s, 80’s and 90’s graduates. Oh wait, that would mean that Whites would be included, so it would have to be SPECIFIED as being for Blacks only. Now THERE’S an event we can be sure has a racially exclusive motivation behind it, instead of simply speculating about whether it does or not!
I don’t know why I differ from the norm. Maybe it’s in the chromosomes. I just don’t like complaining and speculating about what white people’s motives are. I frankly don’t care.
Why such the clamor of something that is directly covered by the 1st Amendment? Anyways, if there weren’t any African-Americans at the school, this is a non-issue. As far as the scholarship money is concerned, it’s their money, they can spend it however they want. I agree that those who are all wrapped up in sour grapes just need to do their own thing and do it bigger and better. Case closed. Great points LaShawn.
La Shawn,
Perhaps you have moved past the point of trying to find racism in every action by Whites as some do. In any given situation, one can find or manufacture a racist element if one tries hard enough to do so. The situation in the story could have been wholly unintentional as far as being exclusionary to Blacks, and it simply may not have occurred to the people who set up the event that by making it for the classes of the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, that it would result in excluding Blacks.
Many Whites who do not deal with the concept of accusations of racism framing their actions on a daily basis don’t think about how their actions can appear when viewed from that slant. For many years I worked as a patrol officer in the area of the City where the majority of residents are Black. Thus the majority of my contacts on any given day were Black, and I never gave it much thought one way or another.
Officers working that area now are under Federal scrutiny regarding NAACP complaints of “Racial Profiling” and have to be careful about the statistics of their contacts. This in essence FORCES them to racially profile who they stop etc. As on officer told me, “Oops, I’ve already stopped 3 Black drivers today, I better let that school zone speeder go, and look for a White driver to stop, if I can find one around here”.
Officers who never considered “racial profiling” while doing their job, and never really thought about how things would look if viewed in that context, now have to consciously practice it TO AVOID LOOKING AS IF THEY ARE. No weight is given to the fact that in the area they work, 9 out of 10 drivers on the street are Black.
By simply doing their job, they are marked as racist merely because the area of town they work in causes a skew in their statistics (statistics we never tracked when I worked that area). This results from people making an effort to find a racist element in the every day activities of those officers, without any consideration for common sense.
The Class of ‘70 seems to be the first integrated class, so maybe they just haven’t made the decade cut yet. Maybe. Somehow I doubt it though. I agree that they have the right to do this, but having the legal right doesn’t make an action righteous.
Montie – I will e-mail you some information about this. It’s too hot for public blogging.
Jeff – I agree. Legality doesn’t make a thing “right.” Child killing is “the law”, and it’s an atrocious abomination. The white alumni could very well have racist (or racialist) intentions. I’ll tell you this, if I want to meet with blacks exclusively on a given day for a given reason, I sure don’t want the government telling me I can’t do it. We need to turn this issue inside out and look at it another way. We seem to understand what free assembly means only when we want to freely assemble.
I’ll play devil’s advocate, along with Montie: if this is a pre-1969 only affair, then black folks in the community have a right to bit** a bit. While I do think, at the same time, that they should look at the younger generations and see where they stand, since the people from the class of 52 are old enough that they are set into their ways. They may change, but energy is better spent looking at today’s kids. I know my granny has some odd notions according to my world-view, and I am sure the kids in Somerset county today know that their grandparents and parents grew up in a different era as well.
As for the scholarship money raised, since this is an independent group, they can do with it what they please, within the existing framework of the law. I know plenty of black alumni groups from different schools (some I have attended) that raise money for black students only.
While I may not agree with either group’s choice, I have to support their right to do so; after all, I give money to a charity that provides promising catholic kids with money for college and private secondary school, and another fund that provides for the living expenses of seminary students. I certainly don’t want somebody raiding these funds to redistribute them to other beneficiaries (sp).
For crying out loud, do they have to invite every single attendee of the school for the past 50 years to make them happy? They are already inviting 3 decades of people, probably because these are people WHO WOULD HAVE KNOWN EACH OTHER! You know, you went to school with them, you knew their little or older brother, etc etc etc. I think some people want to see victimization so that they can justify and feed their anger and self-pity.
I’ll concede that it’s quite possible that this event was organized with “race” in mind. I’ll further agree that it’s not a particularly admirable thing (to put it in the most charitable way I can) if it was. That being said, so long as nobody does anything illegal at the event, the reunion’s organizers are perfectly within their rights to run it as they see fit. Like you said, La Shawn, freedom of assembly applies to *everyone*, even people with whom we might disagree.
Could it be ’40s through ’60s are about the same age range and therefore similar interests. Don’t forget the ’70s, besides integration, began a huge cultural change with the peace and sexual revolution; music, dress, attitudes. How much could pre ‘70 generation have in common with younger people!!
If the planners goal really was also racial, my guess is it won’t work because there is a very good chance more than a few spouses(current) will not be white.
1. Why would a person of any race want to go to a reunion that wasn’t even for their class? Wouldn’t you feel just a tad bit out of place?
2. How is it these people’s fault that they graduated before the gvt integrated their school? Why should they be punished for the gvt’s mistakes?
3. Don’t spouses usually accompany people to reunions? And isn’t it possible that one of these 700 people would have married a black person? (Admittedly, not as likely back then as it is today.) But there *is* a possibility that someone might come & bring their black spouse – and I doubt they’d be stopped at the door for interrupting a “whites-only” event.
4. It’s far more likely that some of these 700 people’s children married blacks – and so their mixed-race grandkids are still eligible for the scholarships. Right?
5. As the age of the participants increases (and more of them die off), it’s relatively common to lump the last few decades into one big group – just so that folks don’t show up to the Class of 1948 Reunion and discover that they’re the only one who came. It’s not necessarily racist, just practical.
Let’s see. They’re unhappy about the money being raised and awarded to whites. Well, the people who went to this high school in the eras mentioned were white. I would assume that most of the money is distributed to family members of the alumni, so that would make them…white. If the black former superintendent has a problem with that, then I want free and easy access to all NAACP events and a voice there, AND…big AND I want to be awarded a United Negro College Fund Scholarship. As we all know, “a mind is a terrible thing to waste”. They can’t have it only one way, although that is what they want, isn’t it?
I don’t live in this area of Maryland and can’t comment on the racial tension that may or may not exist there. If this truly is seen by the community as purposfully racist (it would be interesting to hear from some white alumni on this point) then maybe the classes of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s should promote their own bi-racial reunion to show those living the past the present.
I belonged to several groups that had no black members. It wasn’t that blacks were excluded, but that there were no blacks apparently interested in joining the group. Would a reunion of those groups be “racist”? How? One of the groups was formed of foster-parents of a private agency that dealt with emotionally-disturbed children. The children were of almost every ethnic group imaginable (My wife and I were foster-parents for Vietnamese, black, and Hispanic children at the same time). We had one Asian couple who were foster-parents, but no black families (there were quite a few black families working as foster-parents in the several counties that made up the area, there just weren’t any in our group – at least not in the four years we were a part of it, and for several years afterwards).
Circumstances appear to be more in play than racism, and trying to push the latter speaks of an agenda other than community harmony.
OK Harry, move those black mannequins into the auditorium, the school reunion is starting in 20 minutes.
Mayflower touched on what I was going to say. The common denominator for this group, besides skin tone, is that they’re part of the AARP group. This is like WWII vets that start out by having unit/ship reunion and as members start to die off, the groups consolidate further to campaigns (Pearl Harbor/Battle of Bulge etc) to theatre (Pacific/Atlantic) to just WWII and so on. So what. Much ado over nada.
OH Brother! Let folks have their reunion PLEASE!
Geezzz!
“Since the event is not government sponsored, they have the right to set it up in whatever way they choose.”
If it was government sponsored they couldn’t have the reunion? Why?
Note: Kerry’s on the TV doing what James Brown sings about – “Talkin’ loud and Sayin’ Nothin’”
Ok its a slow day and I have lots of free time today! WooHoo!
Do you think it would be racist to have the following organizations?
The Congressional White Caucus
United Caucasian College Fund
Historically White Collages and Universities
Should OSP, AKA, DST, KKY, Sigma, Zeta, Alpha, and others have to integrate? Have a certain number of non-black participants?
Things that make me say ‘Hmmmmmmmm’
“The Brown case sought to outlaw government-sanctioned discrimination, and it accomplished that goal.”
I think brown outlawed government mandated discrimination.
Curious….the Congressional and Hispanic Caucuses in the US House of Representatives don’t ever seem to come under the same kind of scrutiny for their racially exclusive make-up and agenda. Why is that?
Has a white congressman ever tried to join one of these groups? Someone should try just to FORCE federal anti-discrimination statutes into play. I’d like to see them explain there way out of that conundrum.
Has a white congressman ever tried to join one of these groups?
In the late 80s or early 90s, the CBC had a white memeber.
“In the late 80s or early 90s, the CBC had a white member.”
OH! LOL. That certainly vindicates the practice. I stand down.
Montie,
“If the complaining gentleman is so concerned about the motive behind the event perhaps he could set up a “Grand Reunion” of 70’s, 80’s and 90’s graduates. Oh wait, that would mean that Whites would be included, so it would have to be SPECIFIED as being for Blacks only. Now THERE’S an event we can be sure has a racially exclusive motivation behind it, instead of simply speculating about whether it does or not!”
Who cares? In Cincinnati (I don’t know about other cities), we have an event called “The Black Family Reunion”. Three guesses on the race membership of the attendees. Big deal. It’s a big party for black people. People don’t have any problems with societies being formed for people with red hair, say, or people with tattoos. But white people? Any time they want to go off on their own, someone has to attack them. Or the Really Big Threat: A group consisting of only White Male Christian Conservatives – oh, the horror! How can we let a group like that form? They must be bent on dominating the rest of the world, right?
Or could it be that maybe, since the world has done such a job on us by making us afraid of offending anyone who can play a discrimination card, that we might like to gather by ourselves, away from people we fear might pull a lawyer out of their pocket if we say something they don’t like? I’ve been threatened with disciplinary action and/or lawsuits just because someone didn’t understand what I was saying. Maybe some of us would like to be able to have a discussion without that fear.
I guess I should have pointed out that that person didn’t give me a chance to explain myself…
Most reunions allow the atendee to bring alone a spouse/date/significant other. Were any attempts made to prevent this? If not, then could not this person be black and would therefore be in attendance? I don’t think the issue is about race for I just do not believe that many people would go along with such a thing. Maybe I am wrong, but I would just bet at least one spouse would be black and likely in attendance, likely many more and of a large variety of ethnic backgrounds. Sime how I doubt the invitations would say “Spouses welcome unless they are not white.”
I think someone is trying to create trouble and racism where there was none intended. And if not blacks attended the school during that time period, I seriously doubt they care one bit about the reunion. Since when do blacks sit around and pine to attend somebody else’s reunion, anyway??
Things like making some sort of racial issue out of this are nasty games designed to inflame racial tensions and it is counter-productive to advancement in that area. Some do not want racial harmony and equality and strive to pit races and economic classes against each other in very devious ways. You have to wonder why.
Good grief cant we do anything these days without some bunch of whining idiots complaining? what’s wrong with them I’m sure their ancestores were made of tougher stuff then the bunch of spoiled little mugwhumps of today they have it too easy maybe its time for them to face a little time in the wilderness which is what many indian tribes did when someone in their group broke a law or what ever just like what that tribe in alaska did a few years back.
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