Spelling

Recently, a strip club owner in Abbotsford, Wisconsin put up a sign on the door of his establishment...

http://www.nbcactionnews.com/dpp/news/national/strip-club-owner-posts-“no-negroes-allowed”-sign

I was, of course, horrified that in the 21st Century we still have this kind of idiocy happening in the United States of America. 

But then, I didn't understand this idiocy when I was turning six years old and my best friend's parents took him to the World's Fair on the same day as my birthday party.  "Why can't Leroy's parents take him to the World's Fair NEXT weekend?"  I cried.  It wasn't until I was much older that I came to understand that in 1965 little black boys just didn't go to the 6th birthday parties of little white girls.  So rather than have the day become a memory of exclusion and disappointment they took him to the fair, so the day became a good memory for him instead.  Now, as an adult, I'm so glad that his parents handled it that way for him.

I didn't understand it when I lived on the South Side of Chicago in 1968 when the area erupted into violence and fires when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assasinated.  And I sure as hell didn't understand last week when I saw a hate-filled children's video that I posted about. (Read it here)

Even as a child I honestly believed that long before I was this age we would have gotten over these old bitter hatreds.  I believed that I would soon see Dr. King's dream come to pass...

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today."

I hope for that someday too, Martin, but apparently, it's STILL not yet. But I suppose the one bright spot is that we are getting closer, albeit slowly. Nowadays it is only the truly ignorant who are still possessed of that kind of hatred, and they are so demonstrably stupid that they give themselves away just on their spelling alone. Someone needs to point out to the bigot in Abbottsford that "NEGROES" is how the word is supposed to be spelled. And when you're trying to demonstrate that you are the one who holds the correct position on an issue, spelling counts...