I was in the car today Tuesday July 4th, 2017 and was listening to a local radio program. I did not hear who the host was but I was interested in what he was talking about.
A teacher from a Green Bay school district recently resigned and spoke out about the utter lack of control at the middle school she previously taught at.
The host was doing a good job of reiterating that even though the school is attended by a high percentage of students of color, this problem was not just white and black, that all kids across the board and country attending public schools are learning in a highly stressed environment, to put it lightly.
And that stressful environment is driving teachers out.
My first thought was of my first book I’m working on, and the point I make about “the sin’s of the fathers are being visited upon the son’s (and daughters) to the third and fourth generations.”
My second thought was about racism and why the heck is that still a thing in this day and age. Then I remembered my personal, adult, experience with racism directed at me.
I owned an automotive repair and car sales shop here in my town, nothing big, just a small starter business.
My experience with racism was…
I knew most of the people on the city council, like you do in a small town of 1800 people. I went to each one of them personally and asked for their input as to how city meetings went and what would the proper procedures be for me to follow. I did not want to waste the cities time, on what I was being told would be a ‘rubber stamp procedure’, at a city meeting.
I went in prepared, heavy on the pre-. In my personal meetings with the city personnel, no glaring snags came up, it was a local guy looking to open a small business in an economically depressed small town, all good, right?
Those same people I met with, all friendly like, had all kinds of questions and requirements that never came up in the info gathering stage, for me at my first city meeting to get my business permit. They wanted live pictures of how I wanted to park the cars, questions about signage, as I had a corner lot, questions about how late I was going to work, etc, etc.
Needless to say nothing got done at the first meeting in late spring and the requirements they would place on me would take us past my proposed opening date in July and send me sometime into August.
Instead of just helping a guy out, I guess everybody needs to use the power they have, when they have it, to feel powerful.
I assessed the situation and the character of the people and came away with even a sharper focus on just how evil and selfish people really are.
And that wasn’t where I experienced the blatant racism, that’s next.
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