Racism Has Never Went Away… It Always Must Be Called Out!
By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart
As I sit in my Kailyard I wonder often about the future.
A few years ago, it was my son’s 21st birthday. He had a few friends round. We called it a party. It was a sedate affair, and I was left wondering at the end of it – what happened to the arrogance of youth, the feeling of I shall live forever and the recklessness of the young. They even tidied up!
Of course, working in education, as I do, it was not long before I met the over privileged and demanding person who believed I was there to serve their wants. It is always chastening to them when I inform them, I am there to serve their needs, which is an entirely different set of negotiations and may involve something we call home truths!
But the news that filtered across the Atlantic the other day of the bomb hoaxes being perpetuated against black colleges caught my attention. It is not just because I am an educationalist that my attention was drawn to such events, nor is it because I would consider myself to be seriously “woke”. It was because it was a shocking reminder of the long term damage done by short term racist indulgence.
According to the reports I read, more than a dozen black universities have been targeted by six children.
Say that again – six CHILDREN!
Now I know of times when an upset teen has phoned a cab or called for a food delivery for their neighbor because they fell out with them but this is another level. And it is not another level simply because it is a prank. It is another level because it appears to be a deliberate attempt to disrupt black education.
This is being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Forces of the FBI. Hell what? There are six tech savvy children who have been identified as persons of interest and they shall no doubt pursue them with vigor. And then criminalize them.
And you wonder at the outcry over the recent arrest and incarceration of parents who failed to stop their son from taking a gun and shooting people? What values are being taught here? What tech savvy child is being told at home, go get them n******?
As 20 field officers are combing the country to arrest and then convict these children, what is happening in the communities in which they live? What work is being done to draw people together and make them better… people? Does the US have the ability to take the crimes of their neighborhood and turn them into learning experiences for all the children? Or is it, see those kids, never turn out like them, say the good privileged folks, who just happen to be white, and are pointing at the poor underprivileged folks who happen to be non-white, as a warning to their children?
The victims of this crime are twofold. Firstly, the young black people who are having their education disrupted and, within a society already more likely to stop and kill them in a uniform than most other countries, heighten the terror they feel from normal daily existence.
Secondly it is the children who feel that a simple prank when it is targeted against a certain “type” of person is more than acceptable, possibly because harmless Uncle Frank or odd Aunt Clarissa or mom or daddy dearest are telling them it is OK.
It ain’t OK is just the beginning of it.
What type of community are they going to grow into? What type of relationship with life are they going to be part of when their whole being thinks that it is funny to terrorise others whilst you, yourself are a CHILD?
White supremacy should be a topic in history and not a political reality. The use of terror should be a war based strategy we do not espouse and not a domestic reality some of our young are forced to face. But it is a legacy of having people like Orban in Hungary, Le Pen in France, Erdogan in Turkey, BREXIT in Britain and Donald Trump everywhere. Cheers guys, it’s been predictable…
A view from the new Kailyard or, how you look over there, from over here…
(Kailyard n. a cabbage patch, often attached to a school of writing – the Kailyard School – a genre of overly sentimental and sweet Scottish literature from the late 19th century where sentimental and nostalgic tales are told in escapist tales of fantasy, but here we seek to reverse it by making the Kailyard Observations of effective invective comment from that looks not to return to the past but to launch us into a better future by the one Donald worth believing…)
And today’s Scots word tae bamboozle ye…
Each time we see ye, we shall try tae leave ye wi a word o oors tae replace a word o thine. Jist fur the sake o learnin, ken!
Wabsteid – a recent Scots word which means website. It takes wab which means woven cloth and steid which means place and puts them thegither! Simples…