Dear Collin, (Your first name is Collin, isn't it? May I call you Collin? Or do you prefer to be called by your surname?)

Oh, I'm sorry your head hurts. I hope the headache goes away soon.

I would never have considered an abortion myself (except perhaps in the most outrageous scenario) nor would I counsel my daughters toward it. However, I grew up pre-Roe-v-Wade and I realize that making abortion illegal only drives it underground (or into a back alley, to be more specific). We desegregated schools, but they haven't actually remained desegregated, now have they? I mean, in many place, people simply move. Sure, it works in small rural places like where I live. We never had a minute's problem when the schools were desegregated (I graduated HS in 1965) and we still don't. But, we never had race riots here, either. It's a small rural town. People in small rural communities often tend to be more "laid back" about most things. (shrug)

My point was (and I think you agree) that you cannot make a law that changes peoples' minds and hearts about such things. Those who find abortion to be within their personal list of acceptable alternatives, will find a way to have one if the need arises. People who find nothing wrong with the intake of alcoholic beverages will make their own or frequent their local bootlegger under prohibition laws. (I live in a "dry county" - lol. Yes, we do have bootleggers.) In my particular small school, we didn't have a problem with desegregation because .. well, we (my parents generation and their kids) didn't mind white kids and black kids being educated in the same building. The point being that hearts and minds were already in the right place to accept it. This was, I think, a great deal of the reasons for "Jim Crow" laws. Total and immediate emancipation was not in sync with the hearts and minds of the majority of the Southern white population at the time. The "punishments" of the former CSA (aka "reconstruction") certainly aggravated that problem to an enormous extent and much of the resentment for same was passed down through the generations. Looking back, I see that very clearly in my own grandmother's attitudes and thought-processes.

Yes, I would agree attitudes about the morality of slavery were beginning to change by 1860, but the idea that enslaving blacks was morally abhorrent was far from totally accepted. I've been guilty of a certain flippancy regarding this: by saying that my mid-19th century ancestors thought it no more morally wrong to own a black person than my present family thinks it morally wrong to own a John Deere tractor. But, I believe that to be a true statement.

I believe it was a right thing to eliminate such things as separate bathrooms, separate drinking fountains. I think we went too far when we started bussing kids to achieve integration; it was unfair to the kids and it didn't work.

I think we live in a society today that, someday, people will look back on and be horrified by what WE are doing to people who could be classified as "a minority". It's a sign of changes in perception of what's moral and what isn't. I hope future generations will be kind and intelligent enough to give us our due and realize we didn't live in "their time with their paradigm" concerning these issues.

I enjoyed the article you linked very much. My community probably has more Hispanics than Anglos in it. I don't know the demographics exactly, but I would estimate it's somewhere between 60/40 and 70/30 (the first numbers rep'ing Hispanic pop.). A personal observation from a purely local POV: Most of the Hispanics I associate with personally hold a distinctly prejudiced attitude toward black people. I wonder if what we experience here is the same elsewhere? (Blacks and Hispanics are more prejudiced against one another than they are whites.) Odd, isn't it?

Take two of whatever you take for headaches. Give us a shout when you're feeling better!

Regards,
Penny