If You Grow Up In The South

The Recklessness With Which We Sacrifice Our Sense Of Decency To Maximize Profit In The Factory Farming Process Sets A Pattern For Cruelty To Our Own Kind.

Many Of Us Regard Ourselves As Mildly Liberal Or Centrist Politically, Voice Fairly Pleasant Sentiments About Our Poor Children, Contribute Money To Send Poor Kids To Summer Camp, Feel Benevolent. We're Not Nazis; We're Nice People. We Read Sophisticated Books. We Go To Church. We Go To Synagogue. Meanwhile, We Put Other People's Children Into An Economic And Environmental Death Zone. We Make It Hard For Them To Get Out. We Strip The Place Bare Of Amenities. And We Sit Back And Say To Ourselves, "well, I Hope That They Don't Kill Each Other Off. But If They Do, It's Not My Fault.

I Feel, In The End, As If Everything I've Done Has Been A Failure.

Apartheid Education, Rarely Mentioned In The Press Or Openly Confronted Even Among Once-progressive Educators, Is Alive And Well And Rapidly Increasing Now In The United States.

Unlike These Powerful Grown-ups, Children Have No Ideologies To Reinforce, No Superstructure Of Political Opinion To Promote, No Civic Equanimity Or Image To Defend, No Personal Reputation To Secure.