South Carolina

Political Football…Woah Nellie!!! They’re Taking it to the House.

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

“You really do own your illiteracy, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking about moving to America and running for public office.”
― Alexis Hall, Boyfriend Material

I coached high school football for twenty-nine years. I understood the game as it was played at that time, but I assure you I’ve never understood American politics. Just like football today doesn’t resemble the game I played and coached, politics do not resemble the “game” I grew up with. While American football has become more entertaining, Political football has not. It has become painful.

Politics has always seemed a bit dishonest to me, but today, politicians are hiding their dishonesty in plain sight. Politics is not about morals. It’s not about ethics. It’s not about governing. It’s about power. Win at all costs! If American politics were college football, both teams would have received the NCAA “Death Penalty.”

The fans in red shout, “Push ’em back, push ’em back, wayyyyy back!”

It is political football season, and the United States is down late in the game and facing a third down and a taxi ride…third down and forever. For those who don’t understand “football-ese” there are no plays for third down and ridiculously long yardage that gives a coach any hope for success. Yet here we are facing what I think is a mid-term, third down, “Hail Mary” at best.

Our political system is broken, that shouldn’t be a news flash. The breakage has been going on forever plus a day and it is growing worse…on both sidelines. If the system were a football, it belonged to Tom Brady during Deflategate. It gets worse, both teams have lost their starting quarterbacks and are down to their third string linemen. Negative yardage plays are the rule not the exception. They should think about punting on first down.

What is the game plan? There doesn’t seem to be one. Let’s pull a play out of a helmet and see if it works. Punch them in the face and hope for a snot bubble. Games are not won by who yells the loudest and politics shouldn’t be about who yells the most heated rhetoric. But…here we are hurling insults at the other team…I mean political party. Just insults and no substance.

The cheerleaders in blue yell, “Shimmy up a toothpick, slide down a pine, look at the scoreboard and see who’s behind…YOU!!!”

My hopeful voice tells me it will be okay, brighter heads will prevail and the lamebrains will be voted out. Then a blond lamebrain already elected reminds me otherwise. My cynical voice tells me there is no way because we are playing a political game of football with selfish and mentally challenged coaches and ethically challenged players who only care about the numbers on the back of their jerseys. The fans? They only know the colors of the jerseys, red or blue, and their allegiance is to a color not the country.

Fans in red yell while pointing, “Kill ’em, Kill ’em we don’t care, we’ve got a graveyard over there,” they honestly mean it. This is not a metaphor. (This was a cheer at my college alma mater. There was a cemetery next to the stadium. It was metaphor.)

The political ad season is upon us. The political ad playbook is to misinform and propagandize and it works. Hitler’s big lie is alive and well and we swallow it like a greasy stadium chili dog washed down with flat beer…and we like it and ask for more. Research? This is football not a physics lab.

Our teams use every misdirection play in the playbook from reverses to flea flickers to lonesome ends, but our favorite is the hidden truth…I mean the hidden ball trick. Distract and confuse the opposition’s fan base who is also distracting and confusing their opposition’s fan base. Where has truth gone and why do we allow ourselves to be lied to? Is lying the first rule of political football? Is accepting lies the second rule?

Again, I hear the cheerleaders dressed in blue chanting, “Chewin’ tobacco, chewin’ tobacco spit, spit, spit. Ex-lax, Ex-lax, go team go!”

In my deeply red state of SC, I think I shall vomit into my facemask. Thank goodness I can DVR and run past the ads. One gubernatorial candidate, the incumbent, launches forward passes of “We don’t do that down here” while his liberal, Commie loving opponent brings up football as a metaphor.

It doesn’t matter that the liberal is not a Commie, the red team will win easily because it is easier to support the team rather than the truth and it is the fans’ fault because they could care less about the truth and just hate the word liberal. Being called a liberal in South Carolina is like waving a red cape in front of a bull. Nothing good will come of it.

Just a few South Carolina truth bombs. “Go Deep Henry!” Preferably out of the end zone, through the runway and out of the stadium. Take your ball home with you.

We rank in the top ten of the worst states for domestic violence, infrastructure, education, equality, and obesity according to the latest US News statistics. We rank in the bottom fifteen in public healthcare and access to healthcare, and despite a top twenty economy, rank in the bottom fifteen in economic opportunity. We rank 47th. of fifty in infant mortality.

None of those rankings matter as long as “We don’t do that down here” and thumb our noses at Washington. We will continue to vote against our best interest because “That’s how my daddy and his daddy voted.”

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t totally blame you, Henry. You are the quarterback but only as good as the players on your team and the fans that continue to cheer for their side regardless of truth.

The facts are this, the red team has been in total control of South Carolina, the Governor’s office, the Senate, and the House, for nineteen consecutive years. Yea team!!!! We rank forty-fourth overall among the fifty states. As we like to say, “Thank God for Mississippi.”

One blue fan base yell, “Go back, go back, go back into the woods, your momma dresses funny and your team ain’t no good!

The red counters with, “Go back, go back, go back into the woods! Your breath smells like cat piss and your girl does too.” Infantile? Yes, we are.

We have abandoned all truths. We’ve abandoned those truths that made us what we were, and our political parties hold much of the blame for turning our country into the football game from hell. We the fans share the blame…are to blame. We allow it. We vote for the same old tired rhetoric our grandparents voted for. Our loyalty is to the team and not to the game. Ethics? We can’t spell the word because we rank 44th. in education.

In real football games, one team wins, and one team loses. In most cases, when the clock runs out, we shake hands and go to the local watering hole, forget our good-natured hazing, and raise a few whiles discussing what went right or wrong. In political football, no one wins except the politicians and their rich supporters, and we go to the local watering hole and try to bludgeon each other to death.

Let’s face facts about political football, it’s not about morals. It’s not about ethics. It’s not about governing. It’s all about power. A recent quote, “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate,” from former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch sums it up. She added that “winning is a virtue.”

Just like a football game where winning is the only thing, we really don’t care about lies and deceit and who paid how much for a blue chip QB. We just care about the W and the political National Championship.

How else do you explain a football great who is running for the Georgia Senate that obviously took too many helmets to the head or a woman in SC running for Superintendent of Education who has never stood in front of a classroom and has yet to meet the qualifications to run? These are just a couple of examples.

I don’t know what November must hold. There will be fumbles and interceptions. Crushing defeats and winning by the skin of our teeth. There will be bizarre plays and goal line stands. This will also be repeated in 2024.

I know, I will be glad when the political football season is over, win, lose, or draw. I would never say that about American football.

Interested in reading more of Don Miller’s thoughts? His authors page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3U-N4HtAUsEOnyjKd_cVNPL6ywvzooknWm93aa0gGRAVnaIpKPPzIjlDc

Fifty Years Ago…

/ cigarman501 / 1 Comment

 

Section 5377 of the Code of Laws of South Carolina of 1942: “It shall be unlawful for pupils of one race to attend the schools provided by boards of trustees for persons of another race.”

Fifty years ago, yesterday, The School District of Greenville County became one of the last school districts in one of the last states to comply with the “spirit” of the Supreme Court Case Brown v Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas.  It had only taken sixteen years to accomplish this compliance.

1954’s Brown v Board included a South Carolina case filed by then Civil Rights lawyer, future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall on behalf of Harry and Eliza Briggs and 20 other families living in Summerton, SC, a small town in Clarendon County.  Filed in 1947, Briggs v Elliott challenged school segregation in Clarendon County, South Carolina.  It was the first case filed of five cases combined under the Brown umbrella. 

Unanimously, the Justices found that separate was inherently unequal and that “public school segregation was unconstitutional.” They also found segregation “fostered feelings of inferiority among black children that could harm their educational futures.”

Brown overthrew Plessy v Ferguson’s “Separate but Equal”, a railroad case from the 1890s that had been applied to education.  Mandated segregation in South Carolina was over…defacto segregation wasn’t.

I used the word “spirit” earlier because for sixteen years South Carolina lawmakers systematically attempted to put off the inevitable by increasing spending on black schools, implementing “pseudo” freedom of choice, and an end-run with what became known as “token” integration.

State Senator Strom Thurmond of Dixiecrat fame helped to pen what became known as the Southern Manifesto, pledging, along with one hundred other federal lawmakers, the intent to resist integration as far as the law would allow.

It seemed South Carolina and other states, mostly Southern, were intent on being deliberate rather than speedy when instructed by the Supreme Court to integrate their schools “with all deliberate speed” in 1954.

With a Mississippi Federal Court ruling, segregation ended over a long weekend in Greenville County on February 17, 1970, with the busing of sixty percent of the black school populations to various schools distant from their own neighborhoods.  Only ten percent of white children were bused.  Five hundred educators found themselves cleaning out their desks and moving to different desks in different schools as well.  This was done to reflect the racial makeup of the county, 80% white, 20% black.

What had been black high schools, some quite new became middle schools or closed that weekend.  These centers of pride for many communities, like Sterling High or Lincoln High, were now empty; only living on in the memories of many people of color.

I was a second semester junior in college at the time and not very concerned about the politics of my state.  The next year, my senior year, I would find myself an unpaid assistant baseball coach while doing my student teaching at a local high school.  It would be my first-time interacting with black students and athletes.  It would probably be some of their first interactions with white teachers and coaches.  Somehow we survived.

From all I can glean from friends and fellow educators who taught during the period, the change was relatively peaceful.  I imagine there was some selective memory loss but unlike other states, few buses, if any, were pelted with rocks. There were no rabid white crowds shouting expletives to little schoolgirls. The governor did not stand on the schoolhouse steps shouting, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Still…I can’t imagine what those thousands of students were thinking at the time as they rode school buses to new locations.  I’m unable to fathom the fear of the unknown that prevailed, both black and white.  I can only imagine what might have gone on in restrooms, locker rooms, in the parking lot, on buses…out of range of teacher’s and administrator’s ears.

By the time I became a full-time teacher and coach in 1973, I found race relations still raw and contentious.  Generally, the question of race relations simmered just beneath the surface on briefly exposing itself.  There were just enough brief flareups to remind us.  Beliefs don’t go gently into the night just because judges tell them to.

For years we had been indoctrinated to believe races should be kept separate as a benefit to both, and then in the blink of an eye it was over…or was it?

There were still arguments made and old white men continued to try and find ways around the law.  Court cases would still be heard, especially over busing.  Isolated areas would still attempt to hang on to the old ways.  Affluent white folk found another way to be separate.

One hundred and thirty-four private schools and academies opened in South Carolina during the period, one hundred and thirty-one were opened to whites only.  Many still exist today, many still are all white with names featuring Lee, Davis or Calhoun.

Over fifty thousand white students fled to private schools and today one in seven public schools in South Carolina are considered “highly segregated” still.  “Separate but equal” seems to have a firm foothold all over the South and it appears the Secretary of Education is intent on strengthening its foothold nationwide while weakening an already weakened public school system.

I often hear or read, “We need to move on.  That was so long ago.  I don’t understand why it is always about race.”  I find it is often people of my race who make these comments.  The same people who insist their heritage is under attack when certain flags are removed from federal buildings.

I point out that Jim Crow was still entrenched during the years of my youth well into my college days.  As I reach a major birthday in a month and a half, I find that 1970 doesn’t seem that long ago.  If it is during my lifetime it can’t be that long ago.

I remember the signs stating, “White’s Only.”  I remember fire hoses, German Shepards and burning buses.  I didn’t fight for my Civil Rights, I didn’t have to.  I’m sure for those who fought for their Civil Rights…continue to fight for their Civil Rights, it seems like only yesterday.

Addendum 

According to various accounts, although Brown resulted in a legal victory against segregation, it was a costly victory for those associated with the Briggs case.

Reverend Joseph De Laine, the generally acknowledged leader of Summerton’s African-American community at the time, was fired from his post as principal at a local school in Silver. His wife Mattie was also fired from her position as a teacher at Scott’s Branch school, as were all the other signers of the original petition.

De Laine’s church was also burned and he moved to Buffalo, New York in 1955 after surviving an attempted drive-by shooting.  He never returned to South Carolina.

Harry and Eliza Briggs, on behalf of whose children the suit was filed, both lost their jobs in what was called “economic retribution.”  They both left South Carolina.

After death threats and by a joint resolution of the South Carolina House of Representatives, Federal Judge Walter Waring was forced to leave South Carolina for good.  He had sided with the petitioners.

An interesting article I just read, https://www.greenvilleonline.com/get-access/?return=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.greenvilleonline.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2F2020%2F02%2F17%2Fdesegregation-1-out-of-7-south-carolina-schools-highly-segregated%2F2843394001%2F

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Don Miller is a retired educator and athletic coach.  He writes on various subjects using various genres.  His author’s page can be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image is from “A New Wave of School Integration”, The Century Foundation, https://tcf.org/content/report/a-new-wave-of-school-integration/?session=1

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Sources

https://brownvboard.org/content/brown-case-briggs-v-elliott

http://www.scequalizationschools.org/briggs-v-elliott.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briggs_v._Elliott

 

Kudzu, Cotton and Red Clay Banks

/ cigarman501 / 8 Comments

 

I’ve battled kudzu for the past thirty years.  Some bright soul decided to import it from Japan and somehow the smothering vine has found a growing spot near my garden and is trying to cover a gully cut by a stream.

Kudzu became a great erosion control method, so great it has been called the “Plant that ate the South.”  Below my garden, near the creek, I saw my first Kudzu runner this morning.  The war begins again, a war that I am gradually losing.

Sorry, you’ll have to allow me a “pig trail” memory.  I remember cotton growing in the huge field across from my childhood home…and kudzu growing in the eroded ravine bordering that huge field.  It reminded me of the old Tarzan movies we watched on a black and white television on Sundays after church.  It was a jungle and I feared walking near it.  My childish mind imagined a tropical rainforest flourishing just across the road…lions and tigers and big snakes, oh my!

There was a smaller field of cotton growing behind my house above an eroded red clay bank separating the cotton from the field of corn growing below it.  There was no kudzu growing on the bank but should have been.  Broom straw was all that grew on its banks.

That’s not quite true, my mother grew there too…grew weary of having to clean my permanently red-stained clothes after I played on it.  Until I was old enough to pick cotton or pull corn I honed my imagination playing on those eroded red clay banks.

Tonka toy trucks and earthmovers created redoubts and ramparts to protect little green plastic soldiers who fought for their lives in the battles I created.  Later, as I outgrew the trucks and soldiers, my friends would join me as we refought World War Two battles with cap pistols and my Combat, the television show, Thompson Sub-Machine gun.  Sergeant Saunders would have been proud.  Momma wasn’t.  She still battled my clothing and was a bit peeved when she found me using her aluminum mixing bowl as an army helmet.

None of those items exist anymore…except…the kudzu.  The fields have given over to condominiums. Tonka toys passed down to my younger siblings as I outgrew them, green soldiers became lost somewhere in the sands of time.  Plastic, green soldier heaven I guess…or hell.  My machine gun, carelessly abandoned, run over in the prime of its life by an uncaring bicyclist.

I don’t see a lot of cotton grown near my upstate home.  I see a lot of kudzu.  On trips to the coast in the late fall, I once saw expansive fields growing cotton.  Cotton bolls bursting white in the fall as the fields sped by outside of my car window.  Big green, red or orange machines rolling in unison, replacing the slaves, sharecroppers and po’ white trash who picked it by hand in a time long past.  Even with mechanization, much of the cotton has been replaced by soybeans.

I say po’ white trash because I can.  I used to be a part of the po’ white trash or po’ white at least.  I never thought of us as trash…nor even poor I guess.  Sometimes life is quite rich without the need for money.  Even the owners of the lands we worked were “landed” rich with little actual money.  We worked side by side with the black sharecroppers, their hands callused over from the daylight to dark of night days making four dollars a day…1950s and 60s money.  Let’s see…that’s about forty dollars a day in today’s money, less than three hundred a week in today’s green money for a six-day week.  Not a lot of money to realize your dreams.

Kudzu was planted in the United States in the late nineteenth century as a foul joke.  Not really, it was a novelty, touted as fodder for livestock.  I admit my goats loved it.  When they grazed was the last time I had the vine controlled.  Shouldn’t have gotten rid of the goats.  Good grazing but not good to dry and bail.  Too heavy and wet.

On a bad day, a vine of kudzu will grow six inches in a twenty-four-hour period.  I don’t think kudzu has ever known a bad day.  In optimum growing conditions, which seems to be any humid, Southern summer day, it will grow a foot a day.  I swear on my dead mother’s grave the statement is not an embellishment.  I’ve watched it do it.

Roundup doesn’t work despite spraying it every two weeks and by “All Things Holy,” don’t burn it…it just grows back stronger than before.  I once attached a chain to a large root and tried to pull it up with my thirty-two-horsepower green tractor that does not run like a deer…the root pulled my front end off the ground before the root broke.  As far as I know, the root is still growing toward China.  I guess I need to mend my fences and get a goat.

In the 1930’s many cotton fields had played out and been abandoned due to the depression and the low prices accompanying it.  Erosion had begun to do its dirty deed in fields over plowed and undernourished.  Kudzu was used successfully for erosion control…too successfully.  I’ve seen stands of fifty-foot pines covered, bending under the weight, and abandoned cabins totally enveloped by the vine.  During the winter their gray outlines are almost ghostly.

Beware if you are living next to a stand.  Be vigilant and do not leave your windows open.  A person might wake up trapped in their bed by long green vines.

Like Don Miller’s writer’s page at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image is of an abandoned home about a week from being covered in Kudzu courtesy of http://www.discover.uga.edu