“We don’t go to King, we’re not welcome there,” I was ashamed to hear. We were bus mates going to the ten-year anniversary of the “Moral March for the Poor” aligned with “We the people, United we Stand and March”.
Their kindness extended to me with a tee shirt, backpack with a Lunchables and an apple plus a plush bus to ride. I was horrified they felt they needed to say such. But today on Primary Day at the voting polls at Recreation Acres in King, Von Robertson, running for school board along with Scotty Hooker echoed the same lament. To move our county and our children into the 21st century, we must heal from white supremacy. It is more than bullying, it is terrorism.
King once was a Sundown Town. https://justice.tougaloo.edu/location/north-carolina/ It is time to heal this wound.
Our Moral March bus stopped at Golden Corral on the way back and discussion over lunch reached way back to desegregation, like, “Where were you in school and how did it change your life?” But I had NCA&T in common with my black colleagues as I also went to this historical black college (HBC). The trust level went up, but barely.
Trust is earned.
A book to help me understand was offered, “Punished for Dreaming.” In Punished for Dreaming Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully that Reagan’s presidency ushered in a War on Black Children, pathologizing and penalizing them in concert with the War on Drugs. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white savior, egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration. Today, there is little national conversation about a structural overhaul of American schools; cosmetic changes, rooted in anti-Blackness, are now passed off as justice. It is time to put a price tag on the miseducation of Black children. Then, with input from leading U.S. economists, Dr. Love offers a road map for repair, arguing for reparations with transformation for all children at its core.
There are 19 African American schools in Forsyth and Stokes County with national standards score of F’s while white schools receive more funding disproportionately. https://ncreports.ondemand.sas.com/src/?county=Forsyth
Stokes is a poor county. Our funding is abysmal also. We will be second tier while all schools are constitutionally required to be equal per the Leandro Case that has been won over and over again only to have the NC General Assembly ignore the law and the constitution.
Pope Francis in his 2015 address to Congress said to “Hear the cry of the poor and hear the cry of the Earth.” We ignore these cries to our collective peril.
Vivian Fulk for NC House 91 