Jay's Take On Racism

Yesterday, I wrote briefly about parents rejecting a white teacher for a "Black History" class. Jay Nordlinger, of National Review, writes about the same subject in his Impromptus.

If you say a white teacher can't teach "black history," you must say that a black teacher can't teach "white history." (Why should we have "black history" and "white history" anyway? When it comes to the United States, black people are as much a part of the story as cherry trees, Westward expansion, D-Day, and everything else.) When you say that black children must have "black role models," because white ones won't do, you must say, at the same time, that white children can't look up to Jackie Robinson, Marian Anderson, etc.

But you've heard these points a million times. There's nothing left to do but sigh — or get madder, which, on second thought, is better — more constructive — than sighing.