July 2007 Archives
The Short Bus
Holy Christ. A man tries to keep up a blog and even talks about how he encourages the folks working under him to bust their ass and keep theirs up and then what’s he do? Disappears for months from the Internet discussion with nothing to show for it ’cept a coupla more issues of this here magazine. All I can say is that I hope you’ve been at least enjoying the book (shameless self-promotion, T.I. issue out now, interviewed by yours truly, pick it up, if just for the pics – shouts to Ben Watts, the Shore Club, and of course Tip and crew for making the shoot a success.)
So let’s just jump back into it, right? Last Thursday, the freshly conservative Supreme Court (you gotta love that President we’ve encouraged to run our country into the ground) ruled against public school busing programs designed to maintain racial diversity. Whoa. What a hot-button topic, huh? By now, tons and tons of folks have weighed in on this decision from all sides of the spectrum – I was on vacation, sue me – so I’m gonna try to keep this a lil brief while offering whatever insight I have.
The bad news is that racial diversity is always a good thing. Personally, I’ve benefited from it in all aspects of my life – Memphis, where I was born and raised, the Memphis City School System, where I received all of my primary and secondary education, all the sports programs I participated in over the years, New York, just as a place and where I’ve lived for the past decade, and of course, my job/the business I’ve been doing for the last nine years. You always learn more by being around different folks, no matter their race, culture, or socioeconomic background. I’ve learned as much from the poorest white guy as the richest black dude, and there were a gang of Indians (as in Punjabi not Sioux) who I met in college and showed me all sorts of shit, not to mention the Japanese skate crew I literally used to roll with and my French set that holds me down whenever I make it to Paris. Every single one of ’em taught me something about life, love, happiness, depression, capitalism, socialism, Buddhism, Christianity, being a Sikh, hell, you name it. It’s a big world, seeing it, or at least seeing people who have seen more of it, or a different side of it, than you have is about the best schooling you can ever get.
Which brings us to diversity in schools themselves. While I was coming up in Memphis Public Schools, a busing system was definitely in place. It’s the South, racism is very real, etc. However, my mother, like a lot of parents, busted her ass to get me into the best public schools in the system to the point of camping out over night at the school board to sign registration forms until things were good. It was ridiculous. Point being, I came up in what was called the optional program – essentially kids either from or not from the neighborhood who lobbied and tested into an accelerated program specific to that school; we weren’t the kids from the neighborhood in school essentially to be babysat, we were there to learn. And I was lucky because from K-7 I attended schools in which the classrooms were incredibly diverse, at least in terms of black and white kids (probably 60/40). And the diversity had nothing to do with busing, it was just the way the city was constructed: they were schools in the middle of the city, folks from all walks of life wanted their kids to get an education, and so that’s what all of us went off and tried to do.
But things changed when I hit middle school. As my folks continued to track the best schools in the city and then petition the hell out of the board to get me in the programs rumored to be the best, I transferred out to a school a little bit closer to the ’burbs, ironically (or really not even ironically, blatantly) called White Station. (Memphis can be ridiculous like that.) For the rest of high school, the majority of my classmates were predominately white even though busing programs helped to technically maintain a racially diverse student body within the school as a whole.
All of which gets us to the point: during high school, I thought the busing program was problematic. While seeing folks of different races in the hallways is at least a little bit better than being completely unexposed to other races, segregation within the school was rampant: most of the black kids were in one program, most of the white kids in the other. And it just so happened that the racial makeup was split along educational (and for the most part economic) lines as well. The generally well-to-do white kids were in the civilized, studious classes while generally more economically depressed black kids were in the classes teetering on the verge of chaos. To me, the situation did little to promote integration and instead fostered resentment – it’s like asking a young Marshall Mathers to live in a trailer on Bill Gates’ lawn, of course his whole damn family is gonna be pissed.
So all of that to say I’m not so sure putting an end to busing to encourage racial diversity is necessarily such a bad thing, especially since the ruling doesn’t say anything about busing to increase socio-economic diversity, a solution already being applied in several school districts nationwide. Arguably in 2007, the biggest problem tearing at the social fabric of the country isn’t rooted in race but in economics. There’s no doubt that the distance between rich and poor, across racial boundaries, continues to grow. Socially, on the other hand, a strong argument can be made that we continue to collapse into a more unified sense of 21st Century American (and for a variety of reasons, the wide-ranging influence of hip hop/rap not being the least of them, though MTV definitely deserves credit here as well). Yes, it’s still imperfect, but progress has been made.
Look, the point is that diversity needs to be preserved, in whatever way possible. But simple quotas of any kind are not a solution. You could bus in Martians, but if you locked them in a basement all day, you’d never learn a damn thing about Mars. Diversity, or at least the benefits of it, is something that needs to be encouraged on a day-to-day, hands-on basis. Folks need interaction with folks from different backgrounds, not just proximity. How you actually pull that off in schools is a whole different problem because ultimately it’s not how you get different kids to the building, but what you do with them once they’re there.
Back to the Basics, Stax Bundles (R.I.P.) edition:
Yes, folks, I did finally get a vacation. And I headed back to the hometown, for a not so unusual change. Shouts to everyone who made my trip a great one: moms, pops, Frog, Caroline and the good folks at James Davis, Drew over at Mister Hats, Kevin Johnson at Ramses Shadow, Computer and that crazy chick from Printers’, Keyshia and the rest of the crew from EP’s, Danielle, Fat Brad, Lauren and her beautiful daughter, Jessica for the pool, the good folks at the City Office of Mapping and Central Records for the wall maps, and last but not certainly not least, Cary over at Conqueroo, who came through with tickets to the Stax 50th Anniversary concert, which was truly a night for the books.
Hosted by Chuck D and American Idol’s Randy Jackson, this was a night of standing ovation after standing ovation. And without recounting every track by every artist, I’ll say that Eddie Floyd, William Bell (who was slick as shit all night), and the Soul Children were everything you’d want in a Stax show – passionate, gifted, and aware of how cool it was to be well into middle age, on stage in some loud ass throwback gear, while belting out soul classics, that they all put on great sets (the Soul Children were amazing at this, with the whole hand-wringing “I can’t go,” “we gotta go,” routine made famous by James Brown). Mable John killed it with an intimate performance of “Your Good Thing is About to End” (she looked great as well), Booker T and the MGs tore the place into pieces with two tracks (“Green Onions” and “Time is Tight”), Angie Stone was good (though I’ve seen her better) as was Mavis Staples, and Rance Allen was crazy (who knew? Look him up, he’s great). Isaac Hayes closed the night, and while it’s unfortunate he’s been slowed down a bit by some recent medical concerns, simply seeing him live, in Memphis, on the Orpheum stage was a moment I’ll never forget. Thanks again to Memphis for a great trip. I’ll be back later this month for Crunkfest. And I just might have to buy a new hat.
Records:
Keep telling fools this Boss Hogg Outlawz album is criminally slept on. One track I killed in Memphis: BHOH, "Recognize a Playa"
One of my favorite Stax records: Isaac Hayes, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix"
And one record just for the hell of it: Kriss Kross, "I Missed the Bus"
