Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 21, 1994 TAG: 9403220020
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The ban, which he since has lifted, is indefensible. His comment to a student with a white father and black mother that "Your mom and dad made a mistake, having you as a mixed child" is inexcusable. He ought not to be a school principal.
But in his inept and outrageous way, the school official may have been trying to cope with a much larger problem than his own racial prejudices.
Principal Hulond Humphries of Randolph County, Ala., High School said later that he was frustrated by a series of student fights, and his motive was to ensure safety. It turns out that a few years ago, he had encouraged black and white students to ride separate buses to and from school. All of which suggests a picture of a school enshrouded in racial tension. Firing Humphries, though in itself seemingly necessary, won't be enough to clear the air.
How hopeful was the thought, decades ago, that school desegregation would break down racial barriers and lead to understanding, appreciation and mutual respect between blacks and whites. Kids would start out in school together, get to know each other as individuals before they were infected with the national disease, become friends, develop an immunity to racial hatred.
Some of this has occurred. But, in retrospect, how simplistic to have expected all of this would happen wholesale with no more effort than to open the doors of the schoolhouse and tell all races they now could come in.
Randolph High School - with or without Humphries at its head - quite obviously needs what many public schools need these days: a way to surface and deal with resentments between the races, instead of just responding to incidents and outbreaks.
Fears, slights, misunderstandings, acts of intimidation, inequalities in opportunities: These things cloud efforts to bring people together. They are sometimes overt, sometimes insidious; sometimes real, sometimes imagined; sometimes deliberate, sometimes unintentional. And they are felt not just by black students, but by whites, too; by students of all races.
There is no easy solution to problems as complex as human nature itself. But to fall back on simply trying to separate the groups - in-school resegregation - is no answer at all.
What cannot be forgotten in times of conflict, as groups divide so easily along racial lines, is that every group is made up of individuals, each of whom should be treated and called upon to take responsibility for himself or herself as an individual. Perhaps some troublemakers should be put off the bus, or excluded from the prom. But everyone whose conduct is worthy of attending at all should be able to come with anyone they darned well please.
Few things in life are as simple as black and white; this is one of them.
by CNB