O P I N I O N

THE SOAPBOX

Stand up. Speak up. It’s your turn.

We all want what is best for our children.  The best health, the best opportunities, and the best education.  Given the recent comments by the Chair of the House Education Committee, we have concerns as to what our children can expect.  

Most people are unaware of the roots of public education in the Reconstruction-era policies that followed the Civil War. The efforts to provide the formerly enslaved with educational opportunities, particularly in the South, resulted in the creation of state-supported public schools for all. But this initiative was haunted with the ghost of white supremacy that created the Civil War with de jure school segregation until the 1896 Supreme Court ruling, Plessy v Ferguson, made it de facto, definitely separate but decidedly unequal. This was followed by a painful history of racial segregation in schools until Plessy was partly overruled by the Brown vs Board of Education, Supreme Court decision, in 1954. This, too, was followed with massive resistance and even state laws that held that public school attendance should not be compulsory and money should be allocated to parents as tuition grants if they opposed integration.

With this painful history in mind, living in Manchester, New Hampshire, the most diverse city in the state, reading that a high-level elected state official on the House Education Committee would, at worst, seriously, and at best, even in jest, suggest a return to racial segregation in schools is troubling. We see too many signs of ghosts of the past with a return to policies that appear once again designed to privilege some and punish other residents. We have a responsibility as a community to aspire to the founding principles that this nation still struggles to uphold. The Manchester NAACP has a mission of working together with local citizens to address instances of discrimination based on race or national origin.

Part of the NAACP’s vision is “To ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of all citizens.”  Segregated schools of any sort have never done that. 

With this in mind, we invite the state representatives who made what many believe are discriminatory statements to a meeting to discuss their motivations and intent with their comments and how they align, or not, with the ideals for which this nation was founded and how they serve, or not, to eliminate the inequities that exist in our society.

Arnold Mikolo is President of NAACP-Greater Manchester

Woullard Lett is Education Committee Chair for NAACP-Greater Manchester

Lois Numbi is Legal Redress Committee Chair for NAACP-Greater Manchester