Arkansas Blog: Some don't get it

John Brummett says so, in criticizing a Democrat-Gazette editorial cartoon that likened School Superintendent Roy Brooks dismissal (with $500,000 traveling money) to Elizabeth Eckford's lonely walk throw a shrieking crowd in 1957. In place of a hateful fellow student, Brooks is shouted at in the cartoon by School Board President Katherine Mitchell. It was the only latest example of the D-G editorial page appropriating the names and works of real heroes to advance its political agenda in the Little Rock school district. Brummett gets it.

Let us consider this implied equivalence: Eckford was an adolescent, a victim of racial bigotry and discrimination, surrounded by crowds of angry whites as she dared to do what a federal court had historically granted her the human and civil right to do. Brooks is having a hard time of it, too. He is having his contract bought out for about a half-million dollars. That's because four of the seven school board members, black like the superintendent, believe he has defied supervision from the elected board to run the schools at the behest of certain businessmen downtown.

One of those businessmen is the publisher of the paper running this cartoon. It's a paper long distinguishing itself by rewriting the history of 1957 to say Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to keep the peace, rather than, as is factual and disgraceful, defy the law of the land and stand in the way of this brave young Elizabeth Eckford.

I'm one who thinks Brooks has been effective in some respects. I'm one who wishes the superintendent could remain in the job under some kind of probation by which he'd be required to work with the people bequeathed him by the democratic process. I'm one who thinks Mitchell has not behaved well, even seeking outrageously to intimidate Brooks' deputies out of standing by him.

I'm one who acknowledges certain potential racial implications in this debacle, if, that is, some white people do as they threaten and pull their kids out because they trust only Brooks.

What I'm not is one who can keep his breath that anyone would dare to liken the fate of a terminated contemporary school superintendent to what beset Eckford and those other eight black kids in 1957.

Comments

Maybe I have an odd sense of humor, but I liked the cartoon.

I'm just saddened by thinking what all the District could have done with that $500K... Hopefully it comes out of whatever salary or stipend the School Board members might get.

Posted by: Up The Road | May 31, 2007 07:16 AM

Despicable.

Posted by: learningcurve | May 31, 2007 08:32 AM

I think Up is right about the cartoon. Even political satire is allowed some leeway for irony. The point could be that Mitchell feels as entitled as that white population to show her a** rather than address the issues honestly and make real progress.

As for the rest, 500K is hardly what is missing in the LRSD. This issue could hardly have been a better example of what is going on in our district. The blacks only see it as a cash cow and the business interests as their personal property to control for their own interests. No one is actually interested in education and no one is interested in addressing these issues so that education can be a concern later. It's just about the money. So guess what the outcome of that is? Further decline?

Posted by: Fletch | May 31, 2007 08:40 AM

There are things that should not be joked with nor be manipulated with some sort of twisted irony. On one level, Ms. Eckford's experience was standing alone in a Constitutional crisis. On another level, it was a personally horrifying, grotesquely threatening experience.
Dr. Brooks on the other hand is a hired executive who has been fired [not nicely but certainly democratically.] On the personal level his less than humane treatment was not physically threatening and he is richly compensated for loosing his job.
What is most revealing about the development of this "cartoon" is that it exposes the true thinking and feelings of that newspaper: apoligists to the end for racism, economic disparities, and injustices on a grand scale while purporting to demonstrate "compassion" for an individual. It just depends if that individual is thiers or not.

Posted by: Janus | May 31, 2007 09:42 AM

Anyone who knows anything about the original mob knows it has no modern counterpart. In many ways it was the very ugly end of an era. Oh, I know it is far from over. But, in fact that is what this current controversy reveals. Evil has learned new means and once again race is not the issue.

Posted by: Fletch | May 31, 2007 10:36 AM

On the one hand, I think Brummett (God, what an old maid) needs to get a life and cease looking for every single human imperfection he can find. On the other hand, I realize he has to come with SOMETHING to write about, no matter how nonsensical, since that's how he puts bread on the table.

If anybody's counting, they can put me down as one who has a good bowel movement every morning, does not engage in the practice of amateur psychology, and therefore was not at all offended or appalled by the cartoon. In fact, I thought it was creative and illustrative.

Posted by: durangokid | May 31, 2007 10:54 AM

It just wasn't pertinent or factual.

Posted by: Jake da Snake | May 31, 2007 02:45 PM

Arkansas Blog

Some don't get it

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