So it was the usual diverse crowd at these types of meetings: white, affluent males with striped ties and white, affluent males with patterned ties. The ignorance was hanging thick in the crowded air, and the windows were clouded with arrogance. Not an all-together pleasurable atmosphere, but under any other circumstance I would like to harbor the belief that I could have kept calm.

NOT while these idiots were talking.

It was a discussion that I think that higher-ups in our society have often, a discussion on the state of our schools. Or rather, of the students in them. The portly, balding male that was speaking had a pleasant rumble to his voice and smile-crinkles all around his eyes. I. Wanted. To. PUNCH. Him.

He was prattling on to the politician on a topic that he obviously knew nothing about. He was berating the inter-city schooling system where I live, and he was wrong on every account. To suggest that the young men and women dropping out of our schools are leaving because of a lack of interaction with teachers, or a lack of decent staffing, or a lack of CARE, is preposterous.

To suggest that they are dropping out because of some fault of the school systems is ridiculous. To suggest that they are dropping out because they are "punks" is also of such a crazed nature. As someone who GOES to such an inter-city school, and has FRIENDS among such "punks" and "gangsters" I was finding it increasingly difficult not to attempt to speak up and get thrown out.

I would have told him how incredible those people are. How talented a poet Joey is, or how good with numbers Cassandra is when she tries. That Tyler has a single mother who is constantly struggling to make ends meet, and he hasn't got the TIME for school. How Lamar's been told since he was BORN that he isn't going anywhere, so it isn't worth TRYING, by his parents, by the media, by his friends, by SOCIETY. How really, really sweet Shamara is.

How dare this guy, whose daughter goes to a 100% white, expensive private school, who has spent his entire life looking down on these people, how DARE he make assumptions about why they do what they do? How dare he suggest that they don't have the brain power to make independent decisions about what to do with themselves. How dare he even THINK that it's the teacher who stays after school to try and get that kid to understand Photosynthesis is under-qualified because next year that students going to drop out. If that kid is stuck in his daughter's school he's not going to do any better, not while his history goes with him. While his culture travels to that private school with him.

How can he be so ignorant? And why is HE is charge of dealing with these "punks"?

Ugh. It makes me mad.