I was reading an article online the other day about about a set of parents in Virginia demanding an apology from their child’s school district for the Black History Month play that was put on and that their elementary aged child participated in. It was a segment on Fox & Friends with Elizabeth Hasselbeck of all people and I watched the Youtube clip before reading the posts themselves. In fact, if you want you can watch the quick clip right here.
I don’t even know where to start with these people. First of all, let me say that I am not a parent, but I do have 3 nephews and 2 nieces. My oldest nephew will be 6 in May and the youngest was just born at the end of December. I think they said that their daughter is 8 years old (don’t quote me on that) and that they upset that they had to explain current events (and historical events) to that child after the Black History Month production that the she participated in. Okay, kudos to the school district for not only having a Black History Month program, but having one for all age groups. And I stand behind the superintendent’s statement, I don’t think an apology is owed to the parents. I think that they should have known what all the program was going to cover, which I’m sure the mother could’ve found out by sitting through a dress rehearsal, especially since she knew that they were happening and even mentioned them, but I don’t think that anyone needs to apologize to them for showcasing the history of Black people in America.
People are so used to hearing about George Washington Carver, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Madam CJ Walker, Harriet Tubman, etc that they often forget that history is also now. Michael Brown is Black History. Eric Garner is Black History. I could go on and on, but I won’t. I’m sure this mother was just expecting a cookie-cutter show with cutesy songs and dances and maybe a old Negro spiritual thrown in, but what she got and what everyone else got was a rundown of current events. Stuff that is being shown on television, that is all over the internet, that is splashed across newspaper headlines, stuff that children see anyway. I understand the father was shocked by his daughter’s questions about why police shoot “good” people and are all police “bad”, but I think that if his daughter is 8 it’s time to have the right and wrong conversation. Now I’m not saying that he needs to go into depth on their deadly force rules at work, but he can give her a broad overview of the situation. Let her know that all police officers aren’t bad and in fact he can turn it into a safety talk for his daughter.
Have y’all heard anything about this story, and if so what are your thoughts?
I hadn't heard about this story, but I'm not surprised by it.
I'm not going to get into a political or ideological debate here, but I will say that I think anytime anyone demands an apology, it's kind of ridiculous. So someone says they're sorry? What does that prove? I can say I'm sorry. It doesn't change anything. What they really want isn't an apology. They want the school to say that what they did was wrong.