Buses & Pickup Trucks

School buses rolled by the windows of my office every school morning. Shortly there after the roam of mufflers rolls by on all the shiny new pick-up trucks heading to school. Rather they come off the bus or park in student parking lot, they all head to the same classrooms and play on the same fields. Inequality can seem like a foreign word in a one stoplight town. With our one high school/middle school and one elementary school.

But what is inequality? Is it the difference in family incomes? Is it the opportunities to advance? Or is it the mindset these children are taught from an early age? I grew up on the westside of Chatham County where all the factory working families lived. Before school integration in the early 70’s all us kids in Bloomingdale went to one school from first to sixth grade. Black kids, white kids we all went to the same school attending the same classes. The only white privilege I was aware of was all the black kids lived on one side of town, while most of the white kids lived on the other.

I didn’t really grow up in a racist home, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t surrounded by it. Although I will say, I don’t recall having any black friends till Junior High. It disturbs me to see the racial tensions that are prevalent today. Maybe as a Southern white male, I was just blind to a problem that’s been here the whole time. I don’t like the idea of inequality in a country that once pride itself on welcoming all. Maybe I’m just the last of a dying breed that believes in compassion and equal justice. Maybe the world is going to shit. But I have hope, every time I hear those buses and pick-up trucks. 

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