A cautionary tale is part of new teacher orientation: third day of class a kid shows up after the teacher has carefully accounted for the no-shows and filled in his grade book. “Didn’t you know what school started? It started 3 days ago. You’ve already missed so much (the rules and regulations, syllabus, testing schedule, etc.)” The students apologizes and asks where his seat is. The teacher points to an empty chair, disgusted, and as a parting shot asks what the excuse is “this time”. “We couldn’t schedule my mom’s funeral for any other time,” is the reply. The teacher books a flight for Greenland.
The 16 year old girl in S.C., site of over 50% of slave importations to the U.S. (he injects maliciously and irrelevantly), had lost first her mother, then the grandmother who had taken her in. She had just entered foster care. I was a foster home licenser with CPS, was a foster parent myself, and worked with lots of kids in foster care. This is familiar to me b/c my mom often put me in with other people, strangers, when she couldn’t find a place for both of us in post-war Ohio. It is scary.
So what is a poor police officer to do? The girl was defiant. If “these people” would just bow their heads and politely receive their lashes, it would go so much easier on them. What happened to the good old days when Negroes knew how to behave? White students are arrested in school for substantive crimes, actual crimes; Black students are arrested for “attitude” issues. Again, if they would only learn how to act, you know, like that nice Dr. Ben Carson who has gray hair, a nice Negro haircult, and speaks softly (not like all those other loud Blacks). Hmmmm, what if a police office had decided to enforce the Code when Carson went after someone with a knife at age 14?