Skip to main content

The Biggest


 

On New Year’s Eve as we ate dinner I asked my family, “What do you think has been the biggest local story in 2020?” I allowed as how outside forces (COVID, national politics) have had a major influence but that I was specifically looking for a Columbia/HoCo story.

In what is not always the case (see many examples of “Uh, I don’t know” or silent eye roll) we had an excellent conversation which I would like to share with you here. Except there’s only three of us which means there’s no way I can relay it without compromising someone’s privacy. That counts even with your family. Well, the way local social media has become, it matters even more with your family.

So let’s do this another way.

We ended up talking about photographs. 

And the consensus was that the biggest Columbia/HoCo story was the juxtaposition of the images here and here. (I’m sending you elsewhere because they are not my photographs.)

The first shows an enormous gathering in Downtown Columbia organized by HoCo4Justice to protest the killing of George Floyd and so many Black and Brown people across the country at the hands of police. The second shows a far smaller group assembled to protest the closing of businesses during a pandemic.

And that’s the big story of 2020. 

It was probably the big story of 2019 too, we just didn’t know it yet. 

I say that because issues of race continue to be a huge challenge for us here and they certainly didn’t start in 2020. And their companion, the self-centering white privilege that wields affluence like a weapon has been right there along with it. 

It’s not going away anytime soon. Other local new stories will be featured in the paper but this? This is our story until we deal with it.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...
1 comment
Read more

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

  A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word.  Days passed.  They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts.  Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public.  So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that.  But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...
2 comments
Read more

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...
1 comment
Read more