The South Holds On Tight

This weekend my wife and I saw the most jaw-dropping news report on television. It was a story about a high school in Georgia (unfortunately I don’t remember which city) that was, for the first time ever, having an integrated prom. Oh yeah, you read that right. For the FIRST TIME EVER.

My wife and I were in a state of shock. We really didn’t even know what to say when we saw the news report. And not knowing what to say is very rare for us. It is just that in the year 2007, who would think there was a place where separation of the ethnic groups was still even going on. The report seemed so out of place.

In the report they interviewed some of the students who all seemed to say that the time had finally come to do this revolutionary thing. Oh wow. These kids were actually saying this as if they thought it was forward-thinking to be taking this step. And believe me; I applaud the kids for doing this, however late it is. But what does it say about their world that they would just now be coming to this conclusion? And according to the school administration, segregated proms were not school sanctioned but something the students had chosen to do over the years. But frankly, that is a cop-out by the adults in that city. Clearly they sanctioned this outdated duality and indeed the kids must have been getting their segregationist tendencies from somewhere.

But without indicting the entire South, this kind of report really makes you wonder about what life must be like in certain segments of this region of the country. A first ever integrated prom in the year 2007. Has that town been living under a glass bowl or what?