This Week in Blackness

“I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school systems,” Cosgrove told NewsChannel5 after the sentencing.

Prosecutors said Williams-Bolar lived in Akron, but falsified enrollment papers in the Copley-Fairlawn School District so her two girls could attend schools for two years.

Prosecutors said the lies cost the district about $30,000. Copley-Fairlawn does not have open enrollment and out-of-district tuition is about $800 per month.

There are myriad responses to this case, ranging from the impassioned response of Boyce Watkins to the “fraud is fraud” response by Bob Dyer of the Beacon Journal. Titles all over the Internet have proclaimed “MOTHER IMPRISONED FOR SENDING KIDS TO WRONG SCHOOL!” implying that the only thing wrong was simply enrolling where she shouldn’t have. Under the current laws of Ohio, Williams-Bolar committed a crime. This can’t be argued. What can be argued is whether the actions by the court are right and appropriate for the defendant’s situation.

My initial reaction to this was outrage. I sat at my computer, heart pounding, eyes tearing, because when you peel off all the layers, you have this: a woman (who works with special education children and was attending school for her teaching degree) is being vilified because she wanted something better for her children. And we can’t possibly ignore the racial aspect of this situation. A poor BLACK woman on public assistance is being jailed for sending her kids to the rich white school. I’m not arguing whether this is how it should be looked at; I’m saying that is how it is looked at. It’s questionable at this point whether the teaching degree she’s been working toward will be allowed, because she has a felony charge against her. A family’s life is in virtual ruins because of this situation.

And many say she deserves this.

Reading comments from residents of the town she “stole” the education from say that this is fair. They pay a lot of money for that school. Rules are rules. If you don’t live there you have to pay $800 in order to attend and she did not do so. In black and white terms (no pun intended) this is true. But is anything black and white? Can we truly look at this situation and call it fair? Are we a country that would put a scarlet letter on this woman because of where she sent her kids to school? She didn’t forge $20 bills and buy electronics and diamonds. She didn’t pretend to be a victim of 9/11 and try to claim special funds.

She sent her kids to school.

To judge this simply as a case of fraud is to ignore the surrounding circumstances. Some say that, legally speaking, “circumstances” don’t matter. But if you murder someone they specifically have to figure out if it was a crime of passion, was it self-defense or was it premeditated. Each crime receives wildly different sentences. The bottom line is that a person is dead. But somehow that’s not black and white. They say Williams-Bolar was judged by a jury of her peers. Was she really? Was it a group of poor minorities trying to finally have a chance at the supposed American dream? Were these “peers” people whose families have tried for generations to rise from the injustice and inequalities that they — literally — had nothing to do with?

Show me these “peers.”

I’m not saying Kelley Williams-Bolar was right. I’m not saying she shouldn’t have to pay what she owes to the local government. I’m saying to make an example of a poor mother with a family on her first offense is unconscionable. To think this reasonable is to ignore the reality that we live in and the shades of right and wrong that appear in so many offenses.

By the way, America stole a lot of labor from my people. Are we going to get any of that “owed” money any time soon? No? Didn’t think so. 

But this isn’t a case of political correctness. This is a case of being racially uncomfortable. 

The idea that the book would be used if it didn’t contain the word “nigger” is preposterous. The book, which deals directly with racism, is not better served by erasing the racial slur. The only purpose is to ease the tension that is felt by parents and teachers of students who would read it. To pretend this is for some higher good is to insult the intelligence of the American public. America is a society in which our ugly history is not so far gone as to allow for cold, detached analysis. Because of the mistreatment of everyone who wasn’t/isn’t white, straight and male, America is constantly defending itself instead of dealing head-on with the wrongs that it willingly played a role in. 

Our society has a problem speaking truth about our attitudes toward race. When the book “Game Change,” for example, included comments by Harry Reid saying that Obama could win the presidency because he was a “light-skinned Negro with no negro dialect unless he chose to have one,” many people had a conniption because you’re just not allowed to “say” that. Was it true? Absolutely. Scientific studies have proven a bias — among blacks and whites — against dark-skinned people, but for a politician to state a truth about America and race was unacceptable. Because our incredibly immature mind-set can’t acknowledge fact without fear of reprisal. 

Another example is the planned celebration of the secession of the South. The 150-year anniversary of one of America’s darkest moments is scheduled to be celebrated because participants have somehow convinced themselves that the secession had nothing to do with the owning of other human beings. They yell, “It was about states’ rights!” all the while ignoring the fact that the right most in contention concerned ownership of black people.

America is afraid of its past. Whether it’s how it treated Native Americans, women or black people, it is constantly trying to reframe, color or flat-out ignore major aspects of our history. America, in its constant obsession with being seen as “awesome,” will actively try to Photoshop its own historical portrait. The fear is that to acknowledge the past is to take the blame for it. If we take the word “nigger” out of the classic “Huckleberry Finn” then our kids won’t see it and then we don’t have to talk about it. 

America talks about race like scared parents talk with their kids about sex. We’re vague, sometimes terribly misleading and on occasion leave out huge aspects of the situation that would allow kids to make better decisions about how they conduct themselves. If we continue with our horrendously skewed and willfully ignorant interpretations of history, we will find ourselves with a generation that’s woefully misinformed and it will be completely our fault.