Early evening, April 4

When U2 recorded this song, "Pride (In the Name of Love)" back in the 1980s, Bono sang, "Early morning, April 4, shot rang out in the Memphis sky ..." It was actually 6:01, and Bono often corrects himself when he sings the lyric now (such as in the recent "U23D" film).

I've been blogging about Dr. King all this week and last on my day job. As I wrote today, the fact that the new NYT/CBS Times poll shows that 81 percent of Americans think we are on the wrong track also means that people are ready for change ... more than ready, in fact.

Did you read Leonard Pitts' amazing story about the Memphis sanitation workers' strike? The Idaho Statesman ran every word today, starting above the fold on page 1 and taking up an entire page inside. It was riveting. You can read the original here. I have to say that as I read some of these passages about Memphis in 1968, I found myself thinking about Idaho in 2008:

'Anti-communism was just a huge layer over the white population at that time in Memphis. In the first negotiation that [union organizer] Bill Lucy had with them, Mayor Loeb brings up the communist issue and the war in Vietnam. [Lucy] was dumbfounded and he said, `What did that have to do with anything?' '' The men were talking about raises. About a place to shower the filth off before they went home. About getting paid for time worked. About having a place to urinate. The mayor was talking communism. In the minds of white conservatives, says Honey, ``If you stood up for civil rights, you were automatically a communist.''

Remind you of any modern-day Idaho legislators? What's scarier is the idea that for every Idaho lawmaker who will write such thoughts, there are several more who think them.

Here in mostly white, retro Idaho, many of us don't have much of a chance to see what it's like to be young and black or brown in the Bronx in 2008. The video below arrived in my email today from the Obama campaign. It's long ... 13 minutes or so ... but it demonstrates the fact that we have traveled far as a country since 1968. Of course, it's been said that "Idaho is what America was." For the sake of these kids and our own, let's see what we can do to change that.

Comments

[IdahoRocks]

Thanks, Julie, for the Obama, south Bronx video. It's a far cry from the Bronx I visited in the early 70's, and I intend to show it to my sociology class. Race is still so much with us these days, and yet, because we see ourselves as not really racist, then if we examine how we stereotype people, if we examine our own prejudices, if we examine what we want for our children, and if we examine our own Idaho white privilege, it becomes clearly evident that we still have steep mountains to climb. Especially here in Idaho....

[Julie Fanselow]

IdahoRocks,

Screening this would truly be a gift to your students. I think many of our children - having grown up in a more multiracial society - are less prejudiced than previous generations. Yet if most of the people of color they see are still on TV, stereotypes persist. As for white privilege, it's scarcely recognized in a state as homogenous as ours.

It's probably worth noting that these students are from a "performance and stagecraft" magnet school, thus they may not be representative of the Bronx as a whole. Still, I loved the video and applaud the teacher and the students for talking the talk, then walking the walk.

I'd invite your students to come here to RSR and write about their impressions of the video, if they want to do that.