ARTelevision

ALBANY, GA (Talon News) -- Students in the rural town of Albany, Georgia are planning to hold a private, whites-only prom this year, the Associated Press reported Thursday. The decision comes one year after the school held its first racially integrated prom.

The school's junior class is in charge of planning each year's prom. Last year, juniors broke with tradition and held their first integrated dance. That class, now the school's senior class, is mostly expected to attend this year's integrated prom.

Until last year, Taylor County High School had private, separate proms for blacks and whites for 31 years, as school officials attempted to avoid problems arising from interracial dating.

This year, the school's black junior class president is planning an integrated prom, which a number of white students have said they will attend. Some students plan to attend both proms in order to be with friends.

"I think a lot of seniors were disappointed," senior Erin Posey told the AP. "Now we have to choose between two groups of friends."

Taylor County High school, which has 439 students, is about one half black.

The integrated prom is being held nearby at Fort Valley State University, whereas the whites-only prom is being held 50 miles away, which may provide an incentive to the students to attend the integrated prom.

After the forced integration of schools in the rural South, separate proms were common. Taylor County High School was among the last to end the practice, and now most Southern high schools hold integrated proms.

Yet de facto segregation due to residential differences appears to be rising again in the South, as courts end the busing orders that were put in place in the 1970s to create diversified student bodies, according to the Harvard Civil Rights Project.

The North is typically more segregated by race, as many Northerners go to school in largely-white suburbs, while minorities do so in the cities. Yet the South and West are "resegregating" quickly, according to the study.

Whites, on average, go to schools that are at least 80 percent white, while blacks and Hispanics go to schools that are about 30 percent white. By contrast, in the mid-1980s, blacks and Hispanics went to schools that were more than 35 percent white. Asians usually attend integrated high schools.
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This is sad, man.
I can't imagine why this sort of thing could possibly occur.
Evidently it is a result of a hands-off policy by the school -
allowing students to plan their own proms.

I don't know what to say.
It just bugs me no end.
This story bothers me more than any I read today.
I hope it concerns you too.
How could anyone at all want this?

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Mutant X

This story is ridiculous. If this event is actually occuring and nothing is being done by the school board then it is indeed a very sad day in american history.

greytone

I heard this on the news today and it makes me sad. I live in Atlanta and I was shocked to hear that it was just last year that this high school finally had an integrated prom for the first time. It makes me pessimistic about the future of the human race.

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BBtB

Its bad I agree but if there are a number of students who want a white only prom do you REALLY want to force them to an intergrated prom? I mean I would rather there be two proms then one prom with a scene.

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"I would like about three fiddy"

Serpent

Alot of strange stuff happens in isolated parts of georgia, guess they need to get out more often..

b1m2x3

wow... i cannot believe this. whis kids are seriously messed up.

SCARY to think that they may be the future......

Gortexfogg

I can't believe they have had only one integrated (what we simply call a 'prom') prom! This small town has to be living in the stone age or a very well sealed area. Segregation in the twenty first century? They should read up on their history...

Sun Tzu

As time moves forward the theme of humanity seems to be in a perpetual state of degression; shadow by the growth of technology and indifference.

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Frosstbyte

Reading that is just unreal. I simply can't imagine that stuff like that is still going on in this country. Amazing how even 40 years after the civil rights movement bullshit like this still happens.

Somenosuke

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Roark

I know we drove through GA maybe about 6 years ago and we ate at this little dinner where blacks had to enter/leave from the side entrance and still had seperate bathrooms.

It was really disheartening. This though is crazy and I have to give props to the class president hopefully it will set a precedent and they'll rise from the stone age.

snakemike

that's just sad. at least the motivation for a integrated prom came out of the kid's minds, and not by some law, thus forcing them

Cynthetiq

Seems to me that when the shoe is on the other foot it's completely wrong.

I've been watching lately segregated graduations at state schools (specifically Cal State Univ. @ Northridge and UCLA) where they have multiple graduation ceremonies for each culture. Most people do not attend the larger include all ceremony but just the culturally filtered one.

In NYC I've witnessed Black Expo. Had it been called White Expo people would have protested. Everyone of course is invited but I didn't see a single white person around Jacob Javitz center.

Kids/Teens aren't stupid. They emulate the what they see.

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sixate

This is complete bullshit. Can someone please tell me why their school allowed this to fucking happen? This story drives me insane. What the fuck is wrong with people?

gov135

It isn't Ohio, Sixate. It should be, but it is Georgia.

Sixate, I (an Ohioan) don't get it either. I can't figure out why there is a white establishment in the deep South that feels so secure in their racist convictions that they can publically do things like this. Think about how big of a stink they made about the Confederate flag at the statehouse. I couldn't imagine living, working, sending children to school in communities like these.

The only solace I take from this is that people in 45 or so other states shake their heads in disbelief when something like this surfaces.

Hate is such a powerful thing. Its a shame that these people, young people, seem to be unable or unwilling to break free of the stereotypical white person from the deep south.

Finally, it seems to me that school administrators are hiding behind this "juniors plan for the seniors" thing. Shouldn't someone here be saying "look, theres one prom for a united school and thats it."? Aren't these people, who are held to higher moral and ethical standards due to their positions, grossly embarassed? Or, and this is the scariest to me, are they being supported in the community?

inkriminator

Segregation is now almost synonymous with racism, but is there any reason for it to be so? Diversity is a term that is thrown around constantly, with very little serious thought about it. Those who disagree with the concept are immediately castigated.

I would say that segregation in a limited manner such as this is not necessarily a bad thing. Students can choose if they want to attend an integrated or segregated prom, there is no exclusion, but there is choice.

A multicultural upbringing is felt as a necessity for most upper-class yet the detriments are never discussed. A strong concept of identity and origin is either lost in a diverse environment, or realizes itself as a reactionary and often violent form that does no justice to the pure culture itself.

To be sure, a cosmopolitan society where we all learn from the best of each other's culture is an ideal, yet it is not an ideal that needs to be realizes at the High School level. Some measure of self-indentity should be sought before we expect our youngsters to be ambassadors to one another in race/religion/culture.

The_Dude

i really respect their right to do whatever they want, as long as govt money is not involved. schools (or govt) have no right to tell students what they can and cant do once they're out of school.

but in the inside, i'm thinking "what a bunch of racist pigs"

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wg2000

That quote is amusing -- I've always thought that interracial dating is the solution to racism. The more people who have mixed heritage, the harder it becomes to "classify" someone as a member of any particular race. Or to form groups based on race (so called "pure-breeds" would quickly become a minority themselves).

pangavan

I bet if people look around them they would see that this school is just more honest than most places. I went to a school that was about 60-40 white and black but with the exeption of a few kids we self segregated in group settings. The few who would cross race lines were considered "uncle toms" or "Wiggers". Now none of us considered ourselves racist we just didnt think we had alot in common and we listened to different types of music.

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KillerYoda

Too bad for Georgia, wait till they get a load of the new sheriff:

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billege

"This is sad, man.
I can't imagine why this sort of thing could possibly occur.
Evidently it is a result of a hands-off policy by the school -
allowing students to plan their own proms.

I don't know what to say.
It just bugs me no end.
This story bothers me more than any I read today.
I hope it concerns you too.
How could anyone at all want this?"
-- ARTelevision

That says it as well as I could.
But I'm going to say it my way, anyway...

What's next, drinking fountains for the "colored people?" Or, maybe we can keep the "darkies" at seperate basketball games. Because, people, that's what this is. Blatant, and baldfaced racism. If you don't see it that way, I am sad for you, and even more sad for me.

It is ridiculous and it is disgusting, and we should be ashamed.

These kids are good enough to sit in class together, but not dance? There are no benefits to segregation like this, despite inkriminator's well worded "devil's advocacy." This "anti-progress" should sicken each and every one of us.

We all belong to one race, the human race. Keeping up the pretense that there actually do exist "different races" is going to strongly contribute to our undoing.

There are no "different races." I refuse to accept that skin color, or eye shape, makes one of a different race that I.
They are human; I am human.
We live or die as humans.

Whoever said America is the "melting pot" did not live in modern times. Why does each culture insist on preserving it's past traditions? Why can't we take the best from each and celebrate them all as Americans? Where is our AMERICAN culture?

The past is dead, if we live in it, we are too.

__________________
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"My Invisible Friend is better than your Invisible Friend."

forseti-6

What can I say? It's the south. They still think whites are superior than blacks. It's such a shame. I'm glad I grew up in the north, never even occured to me once that we weren't all equal what I was younger...

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"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." - Dr. Seuss

vermin

Because the people who run the school are the same people who let segregated proms go on 'till just last year. They are part of the problem, they are NOT the solution.

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If puns were sausages, this would be the wurst.

shalafi

I lived in a small town in GA for a few years in the late 80s and early 90s and have no problem believing this. It was maybe 86 or so before blacks were allowed to use the public pool in town and that only happened because the navy was building a base in town and put a stop to the segregation. In school it was alot like pangavan said. Most of us navy brats didnt care that much about color but still the blacks and whites usually kept to their own groups because of shared interests. Its kind of like the jocks hanging out with the jocks and the geeks hanging out together.

MikeyChalupa

This is just one of the reasons why people from the northern part of the US feel superior to people from the south. Granted, not every southerner is a segregationalist racist, and the north has our share of them too. But it seems that for the most part incidents like this continue because the old ways die hard. Drive around a southern state and count the rebel flags sometime. When you get up into the triple digits, maybe you'll have the same thought I often do: Why is it perfectly okay for a redneck to put a bumper sticker on his truck that has the stars and bars and the slogan "Heritage, not hate" when if a person of German descent put a bumper sticker on his car that had the same slogan and a swastika on it they would probably be beaten by those very same rednecks?

Both are wrong. Losing a war means you give all the old shit up. We expected Imperial Japan and Germany to, we expect Iraq to, and yet the Georgia state flag, up until last week still had the stars and bars on it.

The worst part about this whole thing is that the black students seem perfectly fine with it. It's almost like "As long as we're not getting lynched or blasted with fire hoses, then separate but equal is just fine with us."

-Mikey

Lebell

I agree Art, very very sad.

I've not heard of the graducations for specific racial groups, but those are even worse in my mind. The prom wasn't 'official' while the graduations are.

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Empty_One

these people make me sick. I think the thread belongs in Tilied Nonsense, beacuse these people make no sense

Charlatan

It seems so easy to live in a world that doesn't have racism and yet people continually amaze me at how easy it is to live with it...

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BoCo

Is this the year 19-fucking-30?!?

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Jesus Pimp

This is one reason I refuse to live in a southern state.

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Liquor Dealer

The South is no more racist than the North in fact you'll probably find far more incidents of extreme racism in the areas along the E & W coasts than you'll find in the deep south. Old customs die very slowly in some areas. Racism is racism - has nothing to do with just black and white.

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Darkrider

Wow.. that is sad.... 2003 and we have still have segregation. Can't we all just get along?

annie1

yeah i heard about this too... this is terrible

The_Dude

i hate to change the topic, but remember back when bush spoke at a college where they prohibited interracial dating?

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"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

Nhanced1

I recently finished watching "Seperate but Equal" the movie about the supreme court case on Segregation in schools. It opened my eyes about exactly what it was like for some of those kids. Even in today's society, Seperate is not equal. How many of you would bet that "white" proms have much better funding, and are much nicer? I would. Being forced to seperate hurts both groups. I'm sure that I would feel bad if I was told that I cant see my white friends at prom because I am a mexican, and I wasn't welcome at that prom. That would hurt me forever. And all that this sort of practice does is degrade the self esteems of those kids. God, Im so angered by this.

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troit

I'm consider myself to be knowledgeable on many subject but I guess I'm naive to this. I find it hard to believe that this not only still goes on but it allowed to go on and in fact is encouraged. Its a sad commentary to our society. C'mon people -- we live in the 21st century -- this is not the 1960's and 70's when segregation was a novel idea. I would think that the idea of interacial relationships would have sunk into people's heads by now...At the very least into the heads of the younger generations. By allowing these segregated proms -- the older generations are insuring that their own ingnorance is passed down to the next generations -- I'm with you Art -- This makes me sad....

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I've yet to dephile myself...

redrum

-scratches my head-

I live in the 'south', I think. I thought it was against federal law to do something like that?

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Rinndalir

Blanket statements will always get you in trouble.

As someone who was born and raised in rural Alabama, AND who had a long term interracial relationship (white male, she was black) that started in the country high school that we both went to, here is my opinion as an expert witness. Most of the bigotry you'll encounter is perpetuated by the older generations, they're the ones who hold the political and administrative power and can push their agendas. In my generation and younger (I'm 24) there are ignorant people who cling to the old ways because they're too dumb or stubborn, but most are no different from you Northerners (damn Yankees ) as in they may not date people of another color themselves but they wouldn't say its wrong, or really even think anything of it when they see it, and might even do it if they found someone they were attracted to.

Anyway, I was raised in the deepest part of Alabama, the south corner that borders Florida and Georgia, and even there this segregated prom business would never fly. Sure many may have liked it to but there's just enough reasonable people to keep it from happening. For instance there was a story when I was in high school, 95 or 96, where a principal somewhere in northern Alabama wanted to ban interracial couples from going together to their prom...he got in all sorts of trouble and it was all over the media. So it both shocks me and makes me sad that this kind of thing still goes on here.

As for me I started dating my black gf my senior year, we went to every dance together and never caught flack from the school. Infact the only people that gave us any real trouble were our parents (again raised in the old skool ways) and these 2 rednecks in our class (idiots who only know how to hate). To all my friends we were just a couple who were in love. Infact we kind of got a celebrity status at the school, we were the first black/white couple to be out in the open I guess. We didn't do anything normal hs couples don't do but it was almost like people were cheering us on or something.

Anyway anyone else from the South wanna speak up on this?

Cynthetiq

watch O'Reilly talk to the School Administrator. There is also some light shed on the fact that this is a SECONDARY prom, financed and chosen by the students themselves. I'd say it's equivalent to have a private event and inviting only who you want to be there.

(must register) O'Reilly

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.