Oh for the love of God

[sombrefan]

Sesame Street to promote tolerance in Northern Ireland

Say one thing about Big Bird, he's no Bill Clinton.

And if anyone thinks I'm sneering for the sake of sneering. Well the way I see if The American Ireland Fund really wanted to help, they should petition American politicans to campaign for all schools in Northern Ireland to be integrated. No more Catholic schools, no more Protestant ones. They don't promote an inclusive society. Total integration is the only way forward. Piece meal measures like getting a US TV show involved in Northern Ireland are merely applying a band aid on the problem.

Comments

[paperdol.livejournal.com]

I was born around the time of the redlining in Boston that "integrated" the schools.

Sometimes, people self-segregate. I say that as someone whose most cherished hero is Thurgood Marshall.

If kids aren't bussed outside their neighborhoods, it's better, I think. Once you take a child and put him/her in a school outside of walking distance (especially in a community where public transportation trumps car ownership) in order to desegregate, the schools fall apart.

I don't really have the answers, but my parents clearly remember the people in South Boston throwing rocks at busses filled with little black kids.

Of course, the redlining was more about banks aand zoning then it ever was about race-relations, and so, it seems no one really gave such things much thought.

Thirty years later, not so much has changed in people's minds, and the schools are shite, as the move pretty much killed parent involvement. People who could afford to do so, put their children in private school.

I'm not sure that the idea of integration trumps the value of keeping kids close to mom and pop, especially in areas like South Boston where people have lived in a particular neighborhood for generations, and before that, all got off the same boat from the same neighborhood elsewhere.

The value of community has to somehow be kept intact. It's a Solomon situation.

I have no answers, I guess.