CSotD: Other voices
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Marty Two Bulls Sr. greatly expands on my earlier comments about the government's proposal to hand out boxes of food rather than food stamps, or, more accurately EBT cards.
And I am humbled, because while I can only go back a half century to the experience of my friends, he can go back a couple of centuries to the experience of his people.
It's no secret that a large part of their food problems came from Indian agents who had the opportunity to bill Washington for decent food, purchase substandard food and pocket the difference, which, in this era of privatization seems easy to believe, but the entire enterprise, even properly carried out, was aimed for disaster.
Some of it was the hostile form of racism but most, I think, was the more passive form that falls under the Millennial's umbrella accusation of "white privilege," in which you don't care because you don't have to care.
Americans saw open land as wasted land, not as a necessary ecosystem for hunter/gatherers. So they "put it to better use."
Most weren't trying to commit genocide. They just didn't get it.
Which is like the person who runs over you with his car not because he wanted to kill you but because he wasn't paying attention.
The net result is the same.
And he's right that a poverty diet of cheap, substandard food is not the menu for a long and healthy life, whether it's aimed at one particular ethnicity or at all people whom we don't think about because we don't have to.
And I use the word "we" advisedly — that usage is at the center of the overall problem.
Still on the topic of underserved, neglected communities, Keith Knight offers a thoughtful piece on the significance of "Black Panther" to those for whom heroes who look like them haven't happened often enough. Go read the rest.
This could branch off into several areas, but his proposal of a Bechdel Test for black films is brilliant and I hope will catch on.
And when I say "brilliant," I don't mean that it is a concept new to the black community, but that connecting it to the women's experience brings it to a level more people in the wider community can grok.
Which reminds me of a 2007 strip Cory Thomas did in "Watch Your Head," but had to redraw for that wider audience.
This was the one you might have seen in your newspaper.
This was the original version, which you didn't.
It's been pointed out several times that there were black cartoonists working in the days of the black press, and in those days when African-American newspapers provided a forum, the conversation on race was often pointed, because it was among a closed group.
Today, that conversation is coming out into the wider community, not always comfortably, but it is happening and a Bechdel Test seems like a good way to keep things focused on both sides.
Meanwhile, the kids are watching and not always patiently. My 14-year-old critic loved the film and recommended it highly, but faulted it for not being more explicit in addressing racial issues:
The only issue that was really sufficiently covered was that of colonialism, as Wakanda seems to show a potential African nation, free from the lingering effects of the slave trade and colonialism.
Other issues were quickly pointed towards before being swept aside, which is fine for a superhero movie, but meant that “Black Panther” did not live up to some of the hype.
Another of my young reporters emailed last night to say that her class trip to DC happens to coincide with the youth demonstration there against inaction on firearms and wanted to know if she should cover that. A refreshingly impatient generation.
The old man in me agrees with Phil Hands that we need better in-school services for our kids. The experienced educational writer knows it won't happen and couldn't work by itself anyway.
I remember talking to a guidance counselor who was the only person in his capacity for 800 students spread between two buildings. He was frustrated that he genuinely did not have the time to devote to any of those kids, whether they had problems or not.
I also recall high school kids talking about how their guidance counselors were fixated on getting them into college at the expense of kids who had problems and particularly at the expense of kids who had problems and were not "college material."
Whether they didn't care or were simply overscheduled, overworked and outnumbered really doesn't matter in the end.
That hasn't changed and it's not going to change: Please don't tell me you think local taxpayers would approve the cost of hiring more counselors, and don't tell me that the feds will provide the money for it, either.
We'll pile up the flowers and the teddy bears outside the school but then it's back to business as usual.
Except that this particular shooting appears to have kicked over a hornets' nest and I think — and I hope — that the kids are going to demand that we do more than cherrypick our favorite unattainable blue-sky solutions that we have no intention of putting into place.
Hands is correct that yapping about the issue does nothing, but I don't think the kids are going to be content with yapping, and serious legislation would, indeed, help.
We could use more guidance counselors. But we could use sensible gun laws, too. And, if the FBI can't sort through all the tips it gets, how about better funding and training for local police?
What we mostly need is to listen to Gen Z, because they're grabbing the wheel and the bumpiness of the ride will depend on how much we fight to stay in our accustomed ruts.
If you haven't heard Emma Gonzalez, you need to. If you have, here she is again:
Get out of the new road if you can't lend a hand.
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