Essay 434

Schooling the masses with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Three kids at a school in suburban Illinois were charged with hate crimes for allegedly tagging anti-Semitic phrases and swastikas on school property. It was the second time this month that swastika-loving students were nabbed in the area. Police said they didn’t think the incidents were related. Guess hate is an individual and isolated thing.

• Three kids at a school in Long Island were arrested for harassing Black students by lynching a Black doll on the day Coretta Scott King died. Start spreading the hate — New York, New York.

• The Elmwood Park school district in Illinois reversed its stance on dealing with immigrant students, caving in from the pressure of possibly losing state funds (see Essay 432). The school district will no longer reject immigrants with valid visas or even interrogate kids about their immigration status. School officials confessed violating state law and U.S. Supreme Court precedent by turning away an immigrant student last year. Hey, students aren’t the only ones breaking the law in our nation’s schools.

• The mayor of London received a month-long suspension for comparing a Jewish journalist to a Nazi concentration camp guard. He’ll probably spend his penalty time visiting the students in suburban Illinois.

• If you’re an illegal immigrant heading to Tennessee to take advantage of the state’s lenient policies for granting driver’s certificates, turn around and drive away. The state suspended its program after investigators found groups were bringing immigrants from all over the country — from as far away as New Jersey. Hey, maybe folks were just attracted to the Nashville music scene.

• A Massachusetts retailer offered apologies for its advertising that promoted “wife beater” t-shirts. The store’s co-founder took responsibility, insisting he “was either too dumb or too lazy or too distracted” to catch the offensive ad. The guy sounds like a drunken wife beater.

• Seven army paratroopers were charged for engaging in sex acts for a video on a gay porn site. News sources report three of the soldiers “will face courts-martial on charges of sodomy, pandering and engaging in sex acts for money.” They’ll probably be assigned to guard duty at Iraqi prisoner camps.

• Poor people weren’t the only folks seriously affected by Hurricane Katrina. The area’s Black middle class was hit hard too. “The impression is that just poor people were displaced, but Katrina has had a devastating effect on the Black middle class, too,” said Willard Dumas, a dentist now living in Baton Rouge. “You spend 45 years building a life and then it’s gone. Your home was flooded; your business was flooded. And this happened not only to you but to practically everyone you know, so your patients or clients are gone, your friends are scattered, and your relatives are somewhere else.” The Washington Post reported on the issue — click on the essay title above to read the full story.