Sending only black students on a school field trip sends wrong message

Sending only black students on a school field trip sends wrong message




Ann Arbor Field School Trip Sends Wrong Message


The recent Ann Arbor-based Dicken Elementary School field trip to the University of Michigan to meet Alec Gallimore, an African-American aerospace engineering professor, justifiably has caused an uproar that may find its way to the Michigan Attorney General’s office. While it was a great idea to introduce students to Gallimore, who is also the director of the university’s propulsion lab, the plain truth was that to exclude non-black students was blatantly discriminatory.

The real tragedy is that white and other ethnic students weren’t allowed to witness a repudiation of a renewed and widespread attack on blacks, where stereotypes are the weapon of choice. Just as President Barack Obama’ address to the nation’s schoolchildren caused panic amongst a few who did not want their children to see a successful black man who coincidentally leads “our country,” the children from Dicken who were excluded would have seen an accomplished, educated successful and productive black man whose life should be an inspiration for all children, regardless of race.

Those excluded students would have seen a counter to the general characterizations often posted on the Macomb Daily’s website about all blacks as being lazy, self-indulgent, promiscuous, un-educated, welfare oriented, marauding hooligans who are destroying the fabric of Macomb’s quality of life. History teaches us that as resources and services get tight, there is a tendency to find a group to blame for all manner of things, and blacks and Latinos seem to fit the bill as an easy target of frustration for those who feel their way of life is slipping away, hence the cry of “Let’s take our country back!,” a country that we stole from the original Americans in the first place.

Let some of the Macomb Daily bloggers tell it, blacks have been nothing but leeches on “society,” a society where the benefits of citizenship were largely reserved for certain members of this country until a war and several federal legislative acts put a stop to what possibly would have been an eternal damnation of blacks to perpetual servitude to others based solely on race.

You can try to do a right thing the wrong way and have a discriminatory result. I affirm that excluding those children was discriminatory, which is different from a racist intent, which is when you purposely do the wrong thing the wrong way hoping for a bad outcome for the target of the act.. There will and should be some consequence to this fumbled attempt at enlightenment, but the Dicken principal should no more be fired than the white principal of that St. Clair Shores high school who sent a letter home to black parents only regarding their children’s alleged lack of academic achievement.

All children, and an ever growing number of adults, should be exposed to the many contributions that blacks made then and make now to the country, but not in such a shallow fishbowl. Some will say that even black history month, which no one is forced to observe, is discriminatory. It is not because no one is obligated to celebrate the contribution blacks have made to this country. Without a month that blacks carved out to acknowledge the positive aspects of our history in this country, whites too probably would not know the significant contributions blacks have made to this country besides that of being America’s forced labor market for more than two centuries.

So when you turn on your air conditioner this summer or go to the movies theater, say a silent thank you to Fred McKinley Jones (http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/fred-jones.html), another black engineer who, in 1939, made the first air conditioner ever for, of all things, the United States government (ever heard of “Thermo King?).