To the Editor,
Recently, I told someone that I had submitted a satirical letter to the Star Herald expressing delight that the City has no regulations or police enforcement to prevent using quiet residential areas as race tracks for ear blasting, dust raising, unmuffled ATV trail riding. My friend replied, “I don’t think they will get satire.”
I reflected on the ability to detect satire when I read Dana Gwin’s June 28 letter proposing a “Human Equivalence” movement. This proposal would discourage references to race in government and society and probably by extension in personal interactions. I wondered, “Is this letter such a good example of satire that I’m not getting it,” or “Is this letter such a good example of total bunk that I am getting that from it.” I concluded that while probably not satire, and probably good intentioned, the letter did amount to bunk. Why so? The letter meandered through some history on slavery and civil rights before culminating in its “race needs to be erased” conclusion. While this was largely factual, and I had no reflex rejection of the conclusion, I nevertheless thought, “I don’t see this happening.” Why not?
Initially, I thought of what some white folks in MS say whenever slavery becomes a topic of discussion. “My ancestors didn’t own slaves, so I’m not responsible for the plight of African-Americans today.” The societal blindness of this statement is usually a conversation stopper for me because challenging such a mental bubble would be a task for Hercules. Indeed it might be easier to slay a nine-headed Hydra than to address how easily many Mississippians absolve themselves of any racial responsibilities for either slavery or the resulting structured inequality in U.S. society today. Chop off one ill-conceived claim for “I’m not responsible” and “I’m not racist” and another would probably immediately sprout forth.
I then pondered how Gwin used human “equivalence” in contrast to the more frequently used term human “equality.” Equality before the law is an American axiom (although still not an applied truism). While currently under debate, such equality even extends to humans labeled “illegal immigrants.” Once on U.S. soil, any human by right is entitled to due process protections of U.S. law. Speculating how Native Americans, on U.S. soil before it was U.S. soil, might view such protection is a letter for another day!
The question at hand is whether human legal equality implies or even fosters Gwin’s appeal for human equivalence.
I went to Latin for help in answering. The root meanings of equivalence are equal and “valere,” with valere meaning to have strength and worth. Human equivalence implies then that all humans would have equal strength and worth. Focusing on the Kosciusko human community, one could ask, how’s that working out for us — equal strength and equal worth?
A statute still stands centrally in Kosciusko, praising those who died for “Truth and Right” in the War of Northern Aggression. The well-mannered protest to have it relocated flamed briefly and then governmentally died, accompanied by protests that “my ancestors died for that cause.” The cause of course is vehemently denied to be slavery because revisionists of history have convinced many that Truth and Right weren’t about slavery, but about economic persecution by the North. Additionally, the racist flag now taken down by all eight of Mississippi’s public universities and most reputable cities still flaps over the Attala Public Library in Kosciusko. Ironically it will be one of the first glimpses of the real town that tourists traipsing to the museum honoring the lives of Native Americans will see.
These exemplary racial insults stay in place regardless of the axiom of equal worth of all humans under the law. The reason is that legal equality is not shored up by a foundational belief in human equivalence. As George Orwell commented, and many humans believe, “All pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others.” And just where might such objectionable Orwellian notions be seeded, nurtured and fostered as normal, in Mayberry-like Kosciusko or elsewhere.
Let’s examine an educational institution purporting to serve the “community of Kosciusko” by fostering “holistic development.” This is PDS, Presbyterian Day School, a local private, Christian school. One would think that fostering holistic development, especially Christian, would not be Orwellian and would include instilling values of human equality and human equivalence. Wittingly, or unwittingly, that may not be the case.
On the enrollment pie chart for PDS, barely noticeable slivers of pie, about 1%, are African American or Hispanic students. The 99% slice of pie is glaringly white. The student teacher ratio is 6:1, while MS public schools are admonished not to exceed 27:1 (but supposedly average 15:1). Thus, the school milieu purporting to foster holistic development really fosters the lopsided development of children in a skewed world of privileged racial divide. Service to the community is to a white children in a city which is 56% or more non-white. In South Africa, this might have been the result of unacceptable racial apartheid, but in MS, this is benevolently considered acceptable private Christian education. Regardless, the message conveyed to young minds is similar. Racial privilege and divide is normal. The “all of us are shades of brown” appeal in Gwin’s letter is a reality many parents can ably ignore and circumvent for their children, sanctioned by their church, and assuming of course the $125 per week or similar tuition can be paid.
PDS is not unique in MS, nor elsewhere, but it is an example of how human social inequality based on race is reinforced as acceptable and how notions of human equivalence are out of consideration, even in Christian religion. However, in 2012, among all states, MS had the highest over-representation of white students in private schools than any other state. (See Southern Education Foundation Research Report, 2016, studying private school enrollment in the South). A recent online debate was whether such private racially divided schools might be fundamentally immoral. Outside of Mississippi, Confederate statutes have been relocated, but in MS they largely still stand, and not flying the flag is raising legislative ire.
Erase race then in MS? How or even why? Racial inequality still structures society, and some still openly or covertly desire that. The Confederate statue in Kosciusko reads, “Lord God of Hosts, Be With Us Yet, Lest We Forget, Lest We Forget.” The repetition isn’t a typo. Truth and Right are not to be forgotten, nor is race to be erased.
Beverly E. Johnson
Kosciusko
