Getting Rid of Racism by Not Talking About It

THE FORT SMITH, ARKANSAS Southside high school fighting rebels, and the Ft. Smith Northside grizzlies leave a big foot print in their community, as do most high school football teams in America. But the Rebels, and their fight song, "Dixie", are being faded out of existence like the Confederacy after Appomattox. Political correctness comes belatedly, like everything else, to the American south. Dixie will be replaced by, believe it or not, "The Wabash Cannonball", and the new team name has yet to be announced. Perhaps "Conformists" would be appropriate. You know...rebels..conformists. Well, whatever. Their new cheer could be "go with the flow!". Political correctness, which probably should be called "social correctness", is a fine thing. Basically, it is nothing other than the belief that everyone should be respected, in word and deed. The fact that there is really nothing wrong with political correctness is perhaps the primary reason why it is so very hated by American conservatives. But maybe it can go a bit too far. Southside was established as a white suburban flight high school back in the days of desegregation, when places like Arkansas were trying hard to continue a hundreds years old policy of racial discrimination in defiance of prevailing trends. So, in a sense, nothing could have been more appropriate decades ago than to name the mascot "rebels", and to defiantly honor the southern tradition of black racial social inferiority. (all the black kids go to Northside, and are grizzlies). But those days are gone, aided and abetted by America's negative reaction to the frequent slaughter of young black men by white cops. Now we are turning political correctness up a notch. No matter how often conservatives tell us that racism would be a thing of the past if we didn't keep talking about it, somehow or other, the African-American population just doesn't seem to buy into it. Somehow, they seem to feel that racism is alive and well, and for the record, comprehensive and revealing studies plainly indicate that it indeed is. But maybe if we would just stop talking about it, and started believing that there is no such thing as racism, it would just go away...