Oh yeah? Well, so's your mother.
Doesn't it seem inevitable that the discourse between the leaders of the Wake County School Board and the state NAACP will soon reach that schoolyard level?
It has already deteriorated to the point that Ron Margiotta, school board president, referred in an open meeting to people who disagree with the board as "animals out of their cages," and the Rev. William Barber was quoted as referring to the board's "Mafia" tactics.
So, can a crack about somebody's mama be far behind?
Barber and most black people are, understandably, sensitive to references to animals. You see, for hundreds of years, we were considered animals - or at least not quite human - and were treated as such in law and in fact.
Margiotta apologized for his remark - well, not really. In an interview a day later with The N&O, what he said was: "If I offended anyone, it was not intended."
Say what? Man, that's no apology, and on a schoolyard would not prevent someone from putting their foot up - oops, sorry. If I offended anyone, it was not intended.
Of course, people whose name ends in a vowel and who hail from New Jersey are understandably sensitive to even passing references to themselves and organized crime. Barber insisted at a news conference Friday that he wasn't referring to specific board members and organized crime when he told a reporter, "This is not a Mafia meeting."
C'mon, Rev. With the leaders of the right-wing boardcabal named Margiotta and Tedesco - the latter the grandson of an Italian immigrant - you can see where they might hear an ethnic slur. Even if they don't, Barber's ill-chosen words allow them to re-direct the focus from their heavy-handed leadership style onto the alleged insult.
From what I know about the Mafia - and that all comes from books, movies and a college pal from New Jersey named, I swear, Vito - Barber's intransigence would cause him to wake up with a horse's severed head in bed with him.
Knowing Barber as I do, he still wouldn't go away. That is a good thing. Despite being depicted as a divisive force - as in "Everything would be cool if he wasn't out raising a ruckus" - North Carolinians need Barber and people who'll speak up. Otherwise, we could end up, as Wake seemingly has now, with a "nonpartisan" board that takes its marching orders from well-heeled people with political motives. For instance, Margiotta's deep-pocketed marionette appears to be Claude Pope Jr., chairman of the Wake County Republican Party.
Clowning around
At the news conference where Barber lamented Margiotta's name-calling, NAACP attorney Al McSurely, a genuine hero of the civil rights struggle in North Carolina, expressed a legitimate fear that the true issues of this school busing debate will be obscured by "sound bites and name-calling." McSurely later provided both when he said, "People are realizing they've got clowns running this school board."
Yikes! That's sure to raise the level of discourse.
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