History's Echoes: Ruby Bridges Visits the White House vs. White Students Who Benefit From a Virginia School Desegration Scholarship

First, I would like to thank Ruby Bridges for her courage. She and others like her made America a better place. They are the shoulders upon which so many of us stand. Although I often lament the fact that regular people do often make history for the worst (see Right-wing populism), they also make history for the better as well.

The latter is why I hold those black folks and others in such low regard who could have made a difference in our time of struggle, but like the Herman Cains of the world, had better things to do and "didn't want any trouble." My contempt also extends to those individuals who have directly and indirectly benefited from the Civil Rights Movement, but who feel no affinity for black and brown people.

As I have been fond of saying as of late, history's echoes are indeed deep and long. Reflecting upon the Black Freedom Struggle and the work done to integrate America's schools by such pioneers as the Little Rock Nine, Ruby Bridges, James Meredith, and many others, I began to think about justice and how far this country has come on matters of racial inequality...and so far she has to go.

Ruby Bridges' trip to the White House is so poignant symbolically precisely because of how it seems to close the circle. Thinking people know the work is far from complete--American schools are as segregated (if not more so in some areas) as they were during Jim and Jane Crow--but the moment brings a nice warm fuzzy feeling to those prone to such things.

Ironically, those fuzzy feelings are also cousins to the flat history, and the twin lies of nostalgia and kumbaya colorblind America that have been thoroughly taken to task in the recent discussions of the white savior film The Help, a movie whose lessons on these matters are clear: racial inequality and the lived legacies of white supremacy in the present can just be solved by a big group hug, a good rewrite of history where all parties are made equally culpable, and by working really hard to avoid any conversations of responsibility or blame.

The language of racial justice is quite limited in the post-Civil Rights, American context. "Reparations" is verboten. While the very word itself is terrifying to a good swath of White America, and the idea that groups of people can petition for grievance, lost wages, wealth, and for some accounting of one of the greatest crimes in human history is well-established in International Law, to even utter "reparations" is deemed a sin that will exile one from the mainstream of American politics.

There is always a caveat: in experiments where the scenario is fictional (but a mirror for what happened in this country), and under which they could conceivably benefit, white Americans are in favor of reparations. But, the same white folks are repelled by the idea of reparations when it applies to Black Americans. Adding an additional complication, other groups in America have petitioned for a group redress of grievance with little protest.

Riddle me that one...

I have always suggested that it ain't about the money and never really has been: the most real and substantial obstacle to reparations is the very idea that White America owes a formal apology to black Americans. To do such a thing, the very act of saying, "I am sorry, we are responsible, and a crime was committed by Whites against Blacks in America" or "yes, whites have and continue to receive unearned advantages because of the color of their skin and the State aided and abetted this" is too much for many to countenance.

Whiteness allows white folks to selectively be a people without a history. Because they lack history, to be held accountable is anathema and unthinkable. In all, opposition to reparations has little to do about "principled" ideology or beliefs about what the State should or ought to do relative to different groups on matters of justice. There are simply too many exceptions made for the consistency rule to be in effect.

The other obstacle to rich and significant conversation about matters of race, justice, and compensation is that everyone is "black" in post-Civil Rights, multicultural, colorblind America. To talk about blackness as something historical and real, a social fact which impacts life chances, and is influenced by institutional structures, as opposed to a "lifestyle" choice mediated by the black culture industry and Multicultural Inc., is simply too "angry" and "un-pc" for the Age of Obama, what is a moment when to critically engage race is to be a "racist" who delights in playing the "race card."

Because Blackness is a commodity that is both sold and consumed, blacks art, black music, black culture, black letters, black genius, and black artistry are made accessible to all. In twenty-first century America, black suffering, black injustice, and black struggle are also products and experiences to be shared across the colorline.

Funny, everyone want to be black when it is convenient; but few ever want to be Black when it counts.

For some time, I have wanted to discuss the following story on how white folks in Virginia are benefiting from a scholarship for those harmed by school segregation and Jim Crow. Ruby Bridges' visit to the White House has provided the fulcrum to finally share it with you all.

I must ask: How did justice ever get so twisted?

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Some of Virginia's Brown Versus Board College Grants Go to Whites

“Both black and white students lost an opportunity because of the state’s decision, and both deserve this aid,” said Brenda Edwards, who administers the Brown v. Board of Education Scholarships for the Virginia Division of Legislative Services. “White people hear Brown v. Board, and they think they’re not eligible. We’re trying to change that perception. . . . We want more people to get the education they missed out on years ago.”

Half a century after many Virginia public schools shut their doors rather than accept black students, the state is offering college scholarships to compensate those whose education suffered in the era of “massive resistance” to desegregation. Among the recipients: white students.

Since 2004, about 70 people have won the scholarships, including a handful of white Virginians whose schooling was disrupted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A precise count of white scholarship recipients was unavailable, but the total is thought to be fewer than 10. Officials who oversee the state program say they want to spread the word to more white students who might be eligible.

Phyllis Archer, 57, a scholarship recipient who is black, said the push to include white students in the program is misguided. “This was the state’s chance to apologize for wrongdoing, not to award people who have never known racism,” Archer said.

June Jeffrey, 69, is also a scholarship recipient. She is a real estate agent who is studying English at Lord Fairfax Community College in Warrenton and is white.

In 1958, four years after the landmark Supreme Court ruling that found school segregation unconstitutional, Jeffrey’s high school in Warren County closed its doors.

While black students left the county or attended loosely organized classes in living rooms and church basements, Jeffrey’s school reestablished itself as the Warren County Education Foundation School, which enrolled only white students. It held classes in buildings across town, keeping the same teachers and paying them partly with public funds.

When a federal court ruled in February 1959 that Warren County schools must integrate, Jeffrey and most of her classmates remained at the all-white foundation school. But she said they lost access to facilities, counseling and the trappings of a traditional high school experience.

“We missed having a real senior year,” Jeffrey recalled. “We just wanted to finish up with our friends.”

Jeffrey detailed those experiences when she applied for the scholarship years later.

“I was just hoping that they wouldn’t ask me for a photo,” she said. She was never sure whether white students qualified.

Not only do they qualify, she later learned, but officials are traveling the state to inform residents — including white residents — of their eligibility. Former students whose public schools in Charlottesville, Norfolk, Prince Edward County or Warren County closed in the late ’50s and early ’60s are eligible.

The effort to recruit white applicants has reopened wounds from Virginia’s painful racial history.

Archer, who is working toward a degree in nonprofit management from the University of Richmond, said she wonders whether some scholarship recipients are from families that defended segregation. “That’s really unacceptable,” she said...

The story continues here.