A summer of pandemic and protest

34 mins ago

This has been the summer of pandemic and protest. Our fairly small college town nestled in the land of Mississippi Burning is a microcosm of our country.   Racial inequality is once again so vivid and so stark it cannot be ignored. After 34 years in public education I never lost my idealism, my faith that education could change these terrible conditions.  But now I see the same inequities and the same outcomes. I finally have admitted to myself that what liberal leaning, white progressives  like me have been doing, at least since the Civil Rights efforts in the 50s and 60s, has not worked.   I have been doing what I should have been doing more, listening to Black people and looking  at the country through their lenses, through their history.  Over the next few months I will be sharing in this blog what I am learning from them. It is what James Baldwin and Eddie Glaude, Jr. called the “after time”. I’ll tell you more about that later.