I’d just like to point out that this was pretty much the point I was making several pages ago, too.
So the time is right - are the circumstances right? Are you protesting to the right person?
Who suggested that Constance should not discuss it with the principal? I didn’t, Grave didn’t.
The principal was included. He/she then assured Constance that s/he would allow Constance to bring her girlfriend to the prom. The principal was not going to enforce the policy. Constance was not going to be deprived of any of the rights y’all are so upset about.
How did the principal discriminate against Constance?
If Constance’s goal was to go to prom with her girlfriend, wearing a tuxedo, she already had that. What she apparently insisted on was something that the principal could not do - change the school board policy. IOW, the net effect was to embarrass the one person who was doing the most to accommodate her.
The party responsible for setting school board policy is the school board. If Constance wanted to change the policy officially, why didn’t she go to them?
This is a good example of something unfortunate that is going on - the tendency to misstate facts. The school did not cancel the prom. That is a misstatement of fact contained in the OP title.
Like I said, it seems that a lot of folks made up their minds what they thought by the time they reached the end of the title. Which is too bad, because the title is misleading and inflammatory. It is also politically correct, and therefore does not seem to be considered in the same light that titles about, say, Planned Parenthood are.
Regards,
Shodan
You mean integrated proms? I’m no expert on when they actually started having integrated proms here around Jackson, as I’ve only lived here since 1989. The only other data point I have is that when I graduated in a different town (back in 1977), proms were private affairs (not put on by the school) and there were two of them.
If you mean school integration, I don’t know why Mississippi was behind Arkansas. Brown v. Board of Education came in 1954; the Little Rock Nine enrolled in 1957; my school was not desegregated until 1968.
Here is an article about the delay.
No one cares what you think, Shodan.
Of course.
Of course.
But… here’s the problem. Rationalization. Some wit once observed that rationalization is more important to human beings than sex. “Think about it,” he said. “Have you ever gone a day without rationalizing?”
In this case, and others like it, it’s important to understand if the calculus that leads you to conclude that today is one of those " ineffectual and/or counter-productive" days is genuine, or if the malaise arises from more selfish motives. I don’t say, definitively, what the right answer is – but I do say that when someone reaches the decision that they shouldn’t undergo great personal sacrifice in support of a principle, it’s fair to wonder if they have so concluded because the time truly isn’t right, or because they’re looking for a way out of undergoing that sacrifice.
Not to be blasphemous, but even Jesus prayed, “If you can, take this cup from me.”
The schools I went to in Kentucky were integrated in 1964, also well after the Little Rock Nine.
Nice article, NinetyWt.
I haven’t yet but I would like to definitely. I also wanted to add that one of the things I appreciate about having grown up in wide-open country spaces in MS is my love of nature, and also, being taught manners – not only by my older relatives but by the examples of many around me (other states engender these too I know). 90, I’m getting the impression we’re close in age, etc. I’ll PM you to nail down if we’ve run across each other, or at least each other’s people. And I definitely will read that article later.
I guess what I meant about being proud of her is that, now that’s she’s in the spotlight, she isn’t shying away from being representative of even the cause that others may be thrusting upon her and she’s not running away from Itawamba County now that everything’s happened.
Let’s stick to the issues and not make this personal, please.
Sure, but that cuts both ways.
If it is legitimate to ask if the principal might be valuing his job more than a admirable commitment to gay rights, it can also be legitimate to ask if the lesbian involved might be subject equally to mixed motivations.
Maybe Constance is motivated, at least in part, by a desire for truth, justice, and the American Way. Maybe she was also motivated, at least in part, by a desire to stir up trouble and thereby attract attention to herself. Teenagers do that sometimes. If that were the case, it might explain why she seemed to insist on the principal doing something he was not able to do - set school board policy.
I guess what bothers me is the characterization that everyone on the one side is a saint, and everyone on the other is a devil.
As I said, I think there is a fair bit of that going on here.
Regards,
Shodan
Yeah, it’s not Mississippi at all:
Tylertown!? Heck, that’s practically Louisiana.
It’s funny to think that in the South there’s still racial segregation going on.
Or was, until the judge fixed it. If indeed this was the only surviving case.
Well… not funny to me. Maybe as in gallows humor. It’s horrible that a few bigots embarrass the hell out of the rest of us. :mad:
The area around Tylertown is very much behind the times (my second husband has family there).
Funny as in Comedian from The Watchmen funny.
It’s all making me very cynical.
I don’t know The Watchmen.
Lots of things in this bad 'ol world make me cynical. That’s why I do my best to treat people decently no matter who it is or where I am. I wish everybody else would too.
You tend to find this stuff in these very rural places. The population of Walthall county is 15,156. The median family income is under $30k. It’s a backwater kind of place.
The Comedian aims a shotgun at a crowd of protesters.
Nite Owl: But the country’s disintegrating. What’s happened to America? What’s happened to the American dream?
The Comedian: It came true.
I’m going to go watch the Boom-de-ah-da video on Youtube.
This is news to me. Everything I’ve read said the prom WAS canceled. An alternative prom was created, and she attended that one. But, not known to her, there was another prom somewhere else.
And even that part’s hazy, as she seems to have said something like: “I was told that they were going to the country club, so I assumed I wasn’t invited.” Not being explicitly invited is not quite the same as not knowing about it at all.
At this point, I don’t know where to go to get the full story.
To quote back from the originally linked article:
Here’s a quote from another article, specifically about the principal:
If you want to convince me that she even had any kind of sideways approval for this, I would like a cite from you that shows that she had a formal guarantee, in writing, that she and her girlfriend (a) would be allowed to attend prom together, (b) dressed in the formalwear of their choice, and (c) would not be asked to leave.
Aren’t you one of the people on this board who’s adopted kids who aren’t white? What if your kids are in high school, the school has an official policy that white students are only allowed to attend with other white students, and one of your kids has a white SO? But the principal so *generously *says that even though your child isn’t part of the master race, they’ll look the other way if they want to rub their little subhuman hands all over some nice respectable white kid in public. You’re seriously telling me you’ll be just fine with that?
You’re dead wrong there, too.
You know what it’s called when an event is scheduled, and then the organizers decide not to host it? Oh, yes, that’s right… It’s been cancelled.
What? No. “One of these things is not like the other,” as the old song goes. We’re looking at the actions of both: the actions of the principal and the school board, and the actions of the student. One is a group of people with jobs, jobs that involve *upholding the fucking law *and not discriminating against *your students *because you find them groady. The other is a minor, who’s attending a public school, which she’s required to do by law, and is attempting to secure the rights to which she is legally fucking entitled.
Haven’t you gotten the memo? It’s not like racism at all…because it’s not. Because it’s NOT. It’s complicated because we have to think about scissoring and dicks in butts and I know this has nothing to do with it, but did you know that every single race and religion hates homosexuals? Plus, this is the South. Oh yeah, go civil rights.