Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Posted by Bill Smith at 4:34 PM | 7 comments

I'm sure that if Mr. Bolton looks hard enough he will be able to find some topic more worthy of the reader's time than a high school that closed over thirty years ago. Not to disparage the legions of readers that are riveted by his nostalgic ramblings. Come on now Warren, how many people are really " holding on to its memories and a promise..."? I would venture to say that a far larger number of people simply don't care. Not that I want to detract from Warren's memories, I have many fond ones myself, I would just appreciate seeing him write an article that dealt with some relevent and non- racially focused topic.
 

Must everything with Warren Bolton be about race? Please Bolton, show a creative streak and try to branch out from the one topic you never grow weary of discussing. You can start a trend of well rounded journalism at the State. It may even rub off on Cindi. Glory be! A day could come when we wouldn't have to read her flagrant vitriol directed at education reform!
 

To attempt to answer the above question, I offer this: I think Race (upper case "R" for the general arguement...the "big picture") is Boltons' "raison d'etre"...I think he sees this as his "calling," and nobody can be fixated like a zealot. But Boltons' single-minded focus and concentration on race (lower case 'r' for the peripheral, mickey mouse racial issues") seems to me to border almost on a maniacal obsession with the unimportant. I mean, honestly! To be so concerned with the order and arrangement of a string of letters on the side of a building when the black communtiy is so obviously on fire just doesn't make sense to me. Figures I've heard and read say that less that 50% of black males graduate highschool. Over 60% have been incarcerated for something or other. Fully 2/3 of black babies are born out of wedlock. If you start counting from the fifties (which is about when things started going horribly wrong I guess), we've simply lost a very significant portion of at least three generations of black folk. My stats may be wrong, but they are way closer to the truth than not, and although I know Bolton knows these facts and writes about them sometimes...COME ON Warren! The main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing. Let's assume for a moment that you get your way and the new school gets the name you want on its' side...what then? Is this really gonna help black people? Or is this not just an insignificant, tangential little distraction? You got your eye off the ball! There are elephants in the room Warren. Better work on them before we get too foamed up about school names doncha think? Dave
 

One more thing...heck, if it takes this silly distraction off the table and out of the way, let's have one of every two schools built in the future named for a black icon or hero. Then hopefully we can get back on track fixing what's really wrong and ~ BONUS ~ we won't ever have to read Boltons'drivel about this nonissue again. Dave
 

No kidding is this the 12th or so opinion piece on this who freakin cares subject or what?
 

Somehow I don't think naming a school after a black icon is going to do anything to help with the problems tearing their community apart( some of which Dave helpfully mentioned above). The fact is that it is easier to talk about an all black high school that closed 30 years ago than it is to deal with the gritty questions that need to be answered. I have an idea, Warren can be the man to directly address the problems that everyone recognizes but is afraid to talk about for fear of being demonized, and then we can name a school after him.

Rod E. McDowell
 

"Is this the 12th or so opinion piece..."

I've lost count too. Warren Bolton has nothing much to say and he spends a LOT of time saying it. Dave