Perceptions: Week of Sept. 15
(What is Perceptions?)
Sept. 15, 1963. The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Is Bombed By The Ku Klux Klan. All four girls pictured to the left were killed: 11-year-old Denise McNair and three 14-year-olds: Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins. Sources: 4littlegirls.com, Thatsalabama.com.
Sept. 15, 2005.The House of Representatives passes a resolution honoring the 50th anniversary of Rosa Parks' refusal to sit at the back of the bus. Source: Montgomery Advertiser.
Sept. 14, 2005. The House of Representatives votes 223-199 to expand federal hate-crime laws against crimes based on race, religion and ethnicity to include crimes involving sexual orientation, gender and disability. Source: San Francisco Chronicle.
Sept. 13, 2005. SteveAudio blogs an August press release by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law, entitled "Tyson Sued for Maintaining Segregated Work Areas: ‘Whites Only’ Sign and Padlock Placed on Bathroom Door" (hat-tip: TalkLeft):
"ASHLAND, AL — A lawsuit filed today alleges that Tyson Foods, Inc. is responsible for maintaining a segregated bathroom and break room, reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, in its Ashland, Alabama chicken processing plant. Twelve African-American employees filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, alleging that a “Whites Only” sign and a padlock denied them access to a bathroom in the Ashland plant. The complaint states that numerous white employees had keys to the bathroom that were not provided to African-American workers..."
This new, sporadic feature is devoted to a nine-year-old who is learning about world events and attempting to apply his favorite systems tp everyday life. For a boy who wants to collect data, apply rules and extract answers, the conflagration of history, current events, human behavior and the body politic is like playing his game with a rubber-band ball and a drunken umpire. Screwy. The one truth of his experience, which unfolds as we drive to school to the tune of news radio every day, is that the more he knows, the more he perceives. Thus begins what I hope is his life-long struggle toward perception--and an appreciation that unless an issue involves fractions or baseball, true understanding takes at least one lifetime. Keep your eye on the ball, son. And stay a student.
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