Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another segment of the nonprofits. And for this segment, we are going to go down to Georgia, and apparently we're going to go back to nineteen forties Georgia and Jason Freedom's Friedman's going to take us there.
What do you got for us, Jason, Well.
Kelly, I've got a pretty spicy story here.
So this took place at an elementary school called Honey Creek and it's in Conyers, Georgia, and the elementary school is facing a lot of backlash from parents because the students there, remember this elementary school reported seeing signs over the water fountains that said whites only and or black blacks only. Now, the school officials said that a teacher
put up the signs as part of history lesson. They were teaching the students about rub Ruby Bridges, sorry, who was the first black student to de segregate the US schools in the nineteen sixties. Now, the story it's from The Independent, and it's via Yahoo News, and it's by Katie Hawkinson and it was put out April twenty four five. Now, Kelly, I'm going to shoot it back to you man.
So cool.
Thanks, Jason, I want to. Actually, I'm going to shoot it back to John and I. John, I know you're totally against racism in any form. Now do you feel that this lesson was racist in any way?
John, we can't hear you tell me.
I'm not. Oh gosh, Okay.
Well luckily it did, so we can go right off of Kelly's question and then John can start.
Okay, John, count the three first. I'll go one, two, three, and three.
Okay, one, two, three, Okay. Well, I really think that anytime there's an authority figure like a teacher or a school administrator or principal, who does something that is offensive to somebody, that that is a racist and it has to be dealt with. However, I am not against good education. I just think that this was not a good educational moment. It was too young as and it was just I don't think that these kinds of issues should be thrown in a kid's face as a role play, like putting
signs up for them. You're there, they don't. They're not going to get anything out of LARPing this except traumatic experiences. So you know, I just feel like they should have done a little bit more forethought, or the teacher should have done a little bit more forethought and knows that the way this explodes is because children can be as cruel, crueler than most adults with their peers, and that some kid is going to make fun of you or going to slam your head into a fountain or something like
that because of these signs. And I think that that that's where it gets to be to me, to be just something that needs to be dealt with, something that needs accountability. And I don't think just educating that the people involved is going to do that. This is something that came up from somebody's unconni is an okay thing to do when it wasn't, and we need to know where that came from.
Yeah, you know, Yeah, you're absolutely right though about kids.
I mean, I think I'd rather face one mean drunk at a bar than ten sarcastic haunting children on a playground. Jason, Jason, I'm going to throw it back to you here for a second. Do you think this lesson was warranted in the way I was taught?
All Right, So I'm gonna go out on a few limbs.
I fully understand that the school is stating, and I believe them that the teacher went outside to prove curriculum, you know, And I understand that this type of thing is definitely going to make people feel some kind of way, you know, and I'm pretty sure they shouldn't have done this at an elementary school. I'm going to say all that that said, I mean, isn't it important that we
remember history so we don't repeat it? As a Jewish person with a Jewish partner, Jewish family, I can understand doing let's say, an exercise in maybe high school or college that involves things like wearing armbands and doing role play, maybe in a psyche collegies. I don't know, you know, depends on protocols, but if there's controls involved and things like that, like I understand, like the need to feel like we're talking a hair, you know, a hair of
what those people felt like. We had the Holocaust Museum here in Houston, right, And it's because we need to see those things, we need to feel those things. We need to sit through our we need to sit through our discomfort, you know, because our discomfort pales in comparison to the actual suffering, right, And we need to confront those demons and make it a fucking.
Reality so sorry.
There are people, Look, there are people who are still alive that promoted segregation. There are people walking around people John's John Kelly's age that all people y'all grew up around that literally lynched people, lynched people who are still homeowners, no justice being served. Took pictures next to, you know, the burning bodies of dead children. They're walking free, living next to us. And what those people want most of all is for us.
To forget what they did.
But it was the re past, you know, and and it's the people who were affected by it are still going through it.
So look, it was bad taste to do it in elementary school. Was it evil? Malicious? Racist? I don't know.
I don't know how to make that judgment because I don't know person involved. But in my opinion, I think a simple environment change and given the right protocols, blah blah blah what I said before, I think a teacher doing this could make a very valid solid point and force some shit into people's faces to show we're still dealing with this today.
This isn't so It's like if.
We put like signs gladiators and slaves and this wouldn't affect us, right, This is Rome two thousand and no thing would well, the slaves things, so yeah, but I'm trying to think of like, yeah, the slaves, but I'm trying to think of like whatever that I don't know. Plebeing Libyan said yeah, okay, thank you. You've got to work it out of my brain. So that wouldn't have any effects on anybody, nobody all hah, I'm a gladiator, it know, people would act like idiots. But something like
this that I think it's telling. I think it's a projection. It's still going on, it still exists. It is still very whites only, blacks only.
So I don't know. I like art.
Art pulls shit out of people. I think this was an art project, just maybe in the wrong gallery. That's in my opinion. I'm sure someone will get mad at me about it.
You know.
Along these lines, there was a quote in the article from one of the parents, and I'm going to quote it. My son was over a water fountain drinking and there was a four colored only sign above and he was made fun of by the other children. To me, that's not a history lesson. And I thought to myself, really, isn't that the very fucking lesson?
Now?
I might not agree as you did, Jason.
I do not agree with the way it was.
Ethical, that's right, sadly, but it was still an ethical because those weren't willing to participants.
Yeah, no, I think it.
I know it was that people.
Because they were singled out for something that had nothing to do with them. It was a condition of their birth. That's the lesson, right. And now the way it was taught was horrible. It should never ever have been taught to elementary children the way it was, that's my thought. But that was the very lesson they were trying to teach, that you shouldn't make people feel this way, and that
people were made the field. This is the way people were made the feel just because they were born into the wrong body.
Yeah, I agree that, like the challenge being made fun of for using the water, because I was in my notes too, because I thought that, like, if this had stopped at the teacher putting up the signs, and then at the school was like, hey, this is bad, take them down, that would have been inappropriate. I think there's merit in using shock value to teach when it's done
appropriately in the appropriate setting. And this is neither of those things, right, but so, but like so for the kid being made fun of for you using that water fountain, I don't think is quite the same as the actual like the the same. It teaches a lesson of being othered, but not in the same way that people who were segregated.
Were, Like Jason said, we're not you know, you're only getting a small bite of the actual experience. Yeah, that's right, right, Yeah.
But at the same time I think that like as you mentioned, I think Kelly like or no it was Jason again, like Ruby Bridges is still alive, Like the first girl to desegregate a white shoes.
Yeah, she was six six exactly.
So you could have Ruby Bridges or like anybody that's her age come and talk to the class and say like, yeah, you see this nice new water fountain that is like clean and the jet comes out as like substantial or like per appropriate amount, so you don't have to put your mouth on the faucet to get water where everybody else is putting their mouth. This would have been the white people found in and there's one over here that is like older and rusty and doesn't work and isn't
really connected to the water system at all. That's the one that I would have had to use, and then the kids would have been like, well, who.
Would fix it?
I don't know whoever is willing to fix a black people color or the water fountain like the good luck finding somebody.
That's That's an amazing way to teach that lesson.
I think. So.
I'm not an educator though, so I know.
So, John, you haven't said much.
Do you do you think this was an attempt to I'm gonna make you say something now. Do you think there was an attempt to say whitewash the history of racism in the USA?
I don't think it was that.
I think it was intended.
I don't think it was intended as.
Me saying whitewash was intended by me?
Okay, I don't know. I don't know where you were going with.
You know, was this an attempt to whitewash history?
Well? So, in certain circumstances it always is. But you know, one of the things that struck me about that is that the casualness with which the schools said, oh well, it was inappropriate, and we you know, and we took the signs down and almost like they're handwaving it away.
But I think it's a little more serious than that, and I think it needs to be at least considered when it comes to educating small children that they, you know, they don't need to be confronted with the absolute evils that their society has been in, you know, when they're that age, when they're an appropriate age to where they can understand it, rather than have to sit there and kind of say, wow, we're bad people for that. No you're not. You're not them, You weren't the ones who
did it. They have to be of an age where they can understand that it's where the responsibility lies and so and elementary school just is in that place. Middle school towards high school. Yes, their brain has developed enough at that point to be able to make those kinds of distinguishments. But you know, that's the only problem I had with this. But I really get angry at people in charge when they handwave something way instead of at
least investigating it a little bit. You know, that just bothers me because they're not taking it seriously.
I agree.
Yeah, Well, they denied any evolment, placing the entire blame on the teacher, right, claiming the teacher didn't submit the signs as part of her lesson plan. And that may well be true. My ex wife was a teacher. She would, you know, submit her her lesson plans, and she was pretty positive nobody ever looked looked them over, So it could and that could have happened here. It could be that the signs were in the lesson plan and nobody ever actually bothered to read through the whole election plan
from every teacher. And it's with me the something first time that someone's laziness is the cause of many of life's problems, never yours, of course, it's always somebody else's laziness. It's your laziness, right, But you have to wonder how long, as you mentioned, how long were these signs up before someone who that mattered even noticed them?
Right?
They had to have been up for quite.
A while if there were that many complaints about it. Yeah, you know, an administrator, a visiting parent, another teacher that could have any of them could have reported it to the front office.
So they were. But they were.
Apparently long enough up long enough for children to be teased over them, which is another fucking problem in its own right. What parents are teaching their kids that it's all right to tease someone over race. Are we still living in the fucking nineteenth century right.
Well, they are in Georgia, apparently.
Well I had to pull I had to pull my kid out of a public school, which I hate that I had to do that, especially in Texas, you know, because we need to focus on the public schools. But one of the biggest problems was the amount of racial and this is middle school, you know, sixth grade classes. The amount of extreme amounts of racist terminology that was used by six grade students at the teachers, at other
students on a daily basis. So this is apparently a thing again now like within that age group that like things like blatant racism are trendy and popular now and on the surge. So it's it makes sense to me just having a kid of that age who's you know, was only in elementary school two years ago, that that's something that goes on. Was going on in the elementary school was racism. And I agree with you, Kelly, there
is because of the age. They are modeling behaviors. Right at that age, you know, up until about twelve ish, you know, loosely, they are modeling behaviors, and they're modeling what they see at home from their direct you know, socialization agents, and they're more or less immediate second circle environment so that you know, it's funny when somebody says that, it's.
Like, oh, what they know, they're not modeling it.
No, literally, that's what they do is model. So the environment that they're around and who they're around, they're in an antike, antagonistic environment and they're just carrying it over at their school and it's a shame and they're probably the ones that get targeted and spoken through that way.
Well maybe maybe one bright spot in this and uh, I don't know if it is or not, but a lot of children become the opposite of their parents. And let's face that these are young. This is elementary school. These are kids who are still idolizing their parents, and maybe as they get older, like the high school ages, that that ideal, that idealizing will take it swing the other way.
But what scares me about that, Kelly, is that it also did you You your grandchildren are more like your grand their grandparents. So I mean, look at you and me and think about that for a minute. Do we really want that to happen?
You?
I think too though, that like the like Jason was saying, it's taking these ideas that these kids are learning, like at home or elsewhere, but now that it's in the school too, like it's concretizing it in print in front of these kids that are getting these ideas and these like inputs and and these impressions that make them think it's okay to behave this way or like that this is just the default way that you should behave and like yeah, of course, like people of different colors are
worse than me, Like why wouldn't they be? And then now it's conquered. Now the school is concretizing that and then putting it in print and giving them just that much more justification to behave and think and act and talk that way. So I'm not optimistic that they will you know, turn it around.
Oh yeah, right, And I could see where kids would interpret this in the wrong way, right, you know. The lesson is to get them to understand how bad it was for you for people to be treated this way. But then yeah, you know, they got theirs their waterfun and we got ours, and that's the way it should be.
That's that's what they just taught us, you.
Know what I mean?
Kids going to misinterpreting the whole lesson right, Your friends are going to fuck with you anyway they can't. I mean, don't forget that, terms like moron an idiot were medical terms, and then it became other terms that we can't say, and then other terms we can't say. So kids are just gonna take whatever medical term there is a time, and anytime their friend runs into a wall or trips over a gravity pocket or or whatever, that's what they're gonna do.
So I call it.
The reason I say it's unethical is because it seems like a really shitty psychology experiment that they ran on kids who weren't old enough to consent, and there were no controls put in place. So of course, any teacher who has is worth their weight, or is actually I say that is getting paid decent, because you got to think these teachers are probably fucking overworked and underpaid. I say, probably, just because there might be one that isn't you know
it's Zach guy. Yes, over there in that place.
You know it's find a contract forty years ago and they still have to fucking out.
Oh That's what I'm saying.
So it blows my fucking mind. Because like, this was not a this was not a smart move. This was this was a recipe for disaster, And of of course some people are going to get pissed, and of course it was going to end up with kids getting meal fucking with each other because that's what good at what that's what kids do. Yeah, man, of course that's what's going to happen, is some kids going to get targeted, and sadly, a lot of times it's in groups that
are doing the fucking with you know what I mean. Yeah, it's the way it was happening at my kids school. A lot of the a lot of the kids like who are people of color? They would go after each other and it was so vicious and just the words use and like the kids would go after the teachers who were like similar ethnicity, and it was insane. This what was happening there, And it was heartbreaking just to see it happening because it was a lot of in
group quote group in group attacking and it's sad. I'm sure that's what happened there. I wouldn't be surprised.
Yeah, And the NAACP got involved, man, Yeah, local, state and local, So that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's a good thing.
But I don't I don't know why that's a good thing. I don't feel like this is like a campaign that anybody's doing against these students.
Somebody made a bad fucking choice.
Yeah, yeah, But I think when you when you get attention to it, that is a form of accountability. You know that that is a form of transparency. You know, you can't deny that it happened at that point, you know, So, which is all together very common, you know, is for the people in authority to say, oh, that never happened, you know, and we probably hates.
Yeah, I can probably argue, yeah.
We could. We could go back and forth on that, so.
I'll give you a minute to go back and forth.
I mean, it's I don't know, because like for me ina a c P. It's like I would think.
That the resources would be suited for people who are like being actually targeted and campaigns are being run against them, or being called groomers or you know, you're trying to trans or kid or somebody who's.
Actually systemic racism instead like individual or a racist student organization or a racist teacher who is blatantly like you know, I I.
Think in this case, this teacher fucked up. I wouldn't be so, I mean, I don't I don't know if it matters. But if this person, the teacher, was a person of color, maybe she was just trying to do something to highlight what's who knows, you know, I mean, he.
Just didn't think it through, right, dude.
It was a dumb fucking move. It was fucking stupid. It was a dumb funck move, all right.
I know what you want to hear something I almost named my podcast Kelly's Coffee Clutch with all k's.
Well, yeah, that wouldn't It would have been a dumb move.
Yeah, that would have been bad.
Yeah, nobody would have been happy about that.
You think about stuff like right off the bad. So maybe she wasn't thinking that.
Way, right, Yeah, So maybe you know, the real problem is that she was a new shitty teacher something. I mean, I don't know, who knows, or she was just sick of everybody's ship. Who knows? But n double a c P. Like, I mean, there's I know, some other ship that's going on that they could probably help out with, you know, I don't know that seems like.
They're busy people. No, doubt they.
Can do more than one thing.
I really think she didn't think it all the way through.
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