By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
May 6, 2003
After weeks of real news from embedded reporters in Iraq on the Fox channel, we are back to watching one of America’s most powerful news anchors attack a minority group for planning a party for themselves and their friends. This time it’s some white kids at Taylor High School in Butler, Georgia where the majority is black.
This is supposed to be news?
“Why should anyone want to have an all white prom?” O’Reilly demanded to know. “This is an embarrassing prom. Excluding people may be legal, but it is WRONG!” In an attack interview with Wayne Smith, Superintendent of the Taylor County Schools, O’Reilly demanded to know why he allowed the all-white prom to take place.
At issue here is whether the kids in Butler (population 2000) have the right to have a posh, and rather expensive, ($400-$500 per couple) Prom 50 miles away in Columbus, Georgia where there was a very nice dance facility. The fact that it turned out to be all white wasn’t necessarily the REASON for planning it. The reason for planning it seems entirely social, considering the cost.
Smith tried to patiently explain to O’Reilly that the school had not sponsored a prom since the 1970s, due largely to the problem of liability. He pointed out that there was a lot of driving on prom night and perhaps even drinking (many seniors are 18 years old or older) and the School District could no longer risk a huge liability court case if a student got killed in an accident. This is a legitimate concern in our litigious society. Every year in the 1970s when I had children in high school in New York State there were entire carloads of kids killed while coming home late from a prom.
Today elementary schools are eliminating swing sets and other schools are filling in swimming pools to avoid expensive lawsuits. I have grandchildren in Wisconsin who were forced to stay on the plowed blacktop area of the school all winter in elementary school to prevent them from throwing snowballs.
For a kid, what earthly use is there for snow if you can’t throw snowballs at your friend?
O’Reilly’s rude response was, “I don’t care about that, ” and he demanded to know why Mr. Smith was “not out picketing against the white-only prom.” Well, school administrators have to care about that.
I had an opportunity to talk with Superintendent Wayne Smith for a few minutes yesterday. He told me that of the 88 juniors and 80 seniors at Taylor High School, only about 40 actually went to that swank $400-$500 per couple prom held last week in Columbus. The notion that it was a racial decision simply wasn’t accurate. Many of the young people who went to the smaller prom may also attend the less expensive larger prom coming up.
This is not a racial issue. It started as a school liability issue and drifted into two proms because some of the kids and parents who could afford it wanted a really special evening for this rite of passage out of high school. Perhaps the media circus last year was part of their reason for wanting something more elegant.
Bill O’Reilly, however, says that those who planned the all-white prom are just bigots who need to be “shamed” by his harassment. Taylor High School has two sets of class officers – a white president and a black president, in the hope that both factions will be represented in all decisions, according Wayne Smith.
Last year, when the same high school held its first integrated prom, the black and the white class presidents and their planning group decided to have one party (partly to save money) and to have a black prom king and a white prom queen. However, there were no other interracial couples at the prom. The Columbus, Georgia Ledger-Enquirer reported, that “eight television networks, including ABC, NBC/MSNBC, CBS, CNN, Nickelodeon, Disney, BBC and Channel 1” showed up to report the event. It quoted the county sheriff, Jim Wainwright, “who helped keep the media circus under control” as saying: “I had a girl ask me to walk her to her car," because she didn't want to be approached by a reporter.
Fox News and Bill O’Reilly missed the integrated prom last year, but having a prom ruined by a media circus might be a good reason why some of the kids wanted no part of a repeat this year. There are hundreds of thousands of parties that are for one group or another. They may be all-black, all-Hispanic, all-Vietnamese, club member only parties, featuring their own kinds of food and their own kinds of music. There are cheap parties and expensive parties. In some areas there are homosexual, or bisexual or transsexual dances without them becoming a national news story for discriminating against heterosexuals.
If segregated proms are so terrible, where do you suppose Bill O’Reilly was a month ago when a dance billed as “The Black Debutante Ball” was held at the city-owned Coliseum in St. Petersburg, Florida? Why weren’t there any white kids there? They weren’t invited, that’s why. There also were no white kids getting scholarships. Should we blast the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, America’s first all black Greek sorority, (founded in 1908) for its racism or praise them for their efforts to provide scholarship money for black kids?
O’Reilly has missed the real story here - the fact that trial lawyers’ eagerness to sue is destroying a traditional rite of passage to adulthood in America – the school sponsored prom that is cheap enough for even the poor kids to attend. It is clear from comments made that those kids at Taylor High School in Butler, Georgia have fewer problems with race than Bill O’Reilly.
O’Reilly claims he is “fair and balanced” in presentation of news as he announces worldwide that those kids showed “an insulting display” of racial prejudice. I say hogwash. He has judged a small, rural community that has a low crime rate, a good record in race relations, and a dedicated school superintendent who cares about ALL the kids – not just the black ones or just the white ones. Worst of all, he has deliberately tried to drive a wedge between the black kids and the white kids most of whom have learned in school, thanks to dedicated people like Wayne Smith, how to work together in a variety of ways in class, in sports and in school politics because both groups ARE represented by class officers.
However, the social life of the kids is their business, not Bill O’Reilly’s, the school superintendent’s or mine.
Hopefully those kids will get together and issue a press release to the world media, signed by as many as are willing of the kids in the school, that they reject the lies being published about them and their school. They should demand that Bill O’Reilly apologize to their school superintendent and stop trying to create racial tension in their community where it doesn’t exist.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com