Leadership’s Future: Some Of My Best Friends Are…
May 28, 2009 by Miki Saxon
In San Francisco the Black and White Ball is the fund-raising event of the season.
In hundreds of small town across the south it means separate proms for black and white kids.
The reason given by many white students and parents in Georgia when asked why, when the school is integrated and the kids hang out together, play sports and date, are their proms held on different nights—white on Friday, black on Saturday—is “It’s how it’s always been; it’s just a tradition.”
The proms aren’t put on by the school, but by the parents. They are held in the same place, but on different nights. White first, black second.
I wrote about another prom in Mississippi that did integrate, much to the rage of many white parents.
Whereas the kids in Charleston, Mississippi pushed successfully for a prom together (Paul Saltzman’s documentary of it, “Prom Night in Mississippi,” created a sensation at Sundance and will be shown on HBO in July.), the white kids in Montgomery County, Georgia used the ‘always been that way’ excuse.
But the black kids “questioned their white friends’ professed helplessness in the face of their parents’ prejudice (“You’re 18 years old! You’re old enough to smoke, drive, do whatever else you want to. Why aren’t you able to step up and say, ‘I want to have my senior prom with the people I’m graduating with?’ ”).
As one girl said, “I really don’t understand, because I’m thinking that these people love me and I love them, but I don’t know. Tonight’s a different story.”
Click here to see the kids and hear their own words.
To me, it seems like the hurried we go the behinder we get.
A sad definition of equality in the Twenty-first Century.
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OK, interesting article, but what does this have to do with leadership? While this is an interesting story about how segregation continues in some parts of the USA, it doesn’t belong on this site.
Hi Big Joe, I’m sorry you feel that way.
Thursday is called “Leadership’s Future” and I write about what’s going on in the coming generation of leaders.
What kids do shapes their attitudes which shape their actions as adults. For that reason I believe this is totally relevant.