Newspaper Page Text
WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 2010
THE JACKSON HERALD
PAGE 5A
Modern-day Towers of Babel
Arcade continued from page lA
I AM INDEBTED
to a politician, a sum
mit, and the Bible.
They inspired me this
week.
Tim Davis is run
ning for governor.
Said he in one of his
campaign ads, ‘This
is Alabama. We speak
English. If you want
to live here, learn it.”
Representatives
from 47 coun
tries attended the summit in
Washington. They were here to
talk about how to keep nuclear
weapons out of the hands of terror
ists. They spoke many languages.
If they hadn’t brought their inter
preters along, these world leaders
would have had trouble under
standing one another.
I don’t entirely Oust interpret
ers. If someone speaks to me in
Bengali and his sidekick tells me
in English what he said, how do
I know that’s what he said? How
do I know he isn’t homswoggling
me? It takes faith, friends.
This is America. We speak
English - and Chinese,
Hindustani, Spanish, Russian,
German, Japanese, Indonesian,
French, Italian, Portuguese,
Arabic, and yes, Bengali. Over
50 million people speak each of
these 13 languages. And perhaps
a few of our fellow citizens speak
one of approximately 3,000 other
languages (that’s right, 3,000),
and that doesn’t include dialects
(And some of us have
the audacity to insist that
our language is the only
legitimate one.)
I’m like you. I’m not
comfortable with all
these foreigners in our
midst. However, if we
asked ah foreign-speak
ing visitors to leave, I
beheve that would be a
mistake.
I hate to disillusion
Mr. Davis, but if all
the foreign-speaking people in
Alabama refused to learn Enghsh
and went home, who would mow
their lawns, clean their mansions,
make up beds in their hotels and
motels, and man their conve
nience stores?
Language is a serious and
important subject, and I ought not
to be making hght of it.
No one knows when or how
language began. One theory is
that it was an imitation of natu
ral sounds, such as grunts and
groans. There are those among
us who have not advanced very
far beyond that theory. There I
go - making fun again. Let’s get
serious.
Language is human speech,
either spoken or written. It makes
it possible for us to talk to each
other and to write our thoughts
and ideas. Wherever there are
human beings, there is language.
Without it, there would be little or
no science, rehgion, art, literature
and philosophy.
(Lo and behold, without lan
guage, you would not be read
ing this stuff. Let’s hear it for
language!)
I admire people who take the
time and trouble to learn a foreign
language. Learning a different
tongue increases one’s range of
communication. I’d like to know
more about the customs and ways
of other nations, wouldn’t you?
If I were younger, I would study
Spanish again. (Did I just hear
the ghost of Miss Lucille tell me
I’m not too old to learn?) I took
Spanish three times at Murray
State before I passed, and I don’t
remember the first thing I learned.
I think the professor elevated my
grade just to get rid of me. I am
not making this up, folks.
I’m sure the Spanish course I
took at Murray “a hundred years
ago” has changed. Language, like
the human beings who speak it,
changes constantly.
Will there ever be a universal
language? I doubt it. However,
people have long been interested
in having one language that could
be spoken throughout the world. I
guess such a language would help
promote understanding and better
feelings among nations. But it’ll
never happen.
We supposedly have a com
mon language (English) in the
United States. But has it led to
understanding and better feelings
among us? Think so? You haven’t
been listening to Republicans
and Democrats go at it lately,
have you? Each thinks the other
is speaking a foreign language.
Instead of bringing us together,
language is keeping us apart. And
that may be the way the Head
of the Language Department
planned it.
“And the whole earth was of
one language, and of one speech.”
- Genesis, Chapter 11.
And the people decided to build
a city and a tower that would
reach to heaven, “lest they be
scattered abroad upon the face of
the earth.”
Well, the Creator of Earth and
Language decided those people
built that tower to satisfy their
own vanity. He came down and
took a look and, sure enough,
they were one people and one
language.
So He decided to “confound
their language, that they may not
understand one another’s speech.”
But he wasn’t through. He
“scattered them abroad upon the
face of the earth.”
Thus it has ever been. We con
tinue to build our cities and Towers
of Vanity; excuse me, Babel.
The wonder is not that we have
difficulty communicating, but that
we are able to communicate at
all.
RS. I am also indebted to the
World Book Encyclopedia for
some of the information in this
column. The opinions are mine
alone.
Virgil Adams is a former owner/
editor of The Jackson Herald,
Presumptions, assumptions, and Arizona’s ban on ethnic studies
BY NEAL LESTER
I AM AN award-winning
teacher whose publishing record
is not too shabby, according to
some of my fellow scholar col
leagues. I am also an African
American professor of Enghsh,
who has taught African American
literature and cultural studies for
over twenty-five years at pre
dominantly white universities.
I graduated at the top of my
predominantly white under
graduate school in Georgia with
a degree in English literature
then went on to become the first
African American to graduate
with a PhD in Enghsh literature
at Vanderbilt University.
Despite having earned these
degrees from reputable U.S.
institutions of higher education
and having demonstrated beyond
satisfactorily my general mas
tery of the works of William
Shakespeare, William Faulkner,
Washington Irving, Tennessee
Williams, Thoreau and Emerson,
Emily Dickinson, Swinburne,
Adrienne Rich, John Milton,
Geoffrey Chaucer, and the rest, I
was unaware of the real power of
literature and literary studies until
I read — during the last year of
my doctoral coursework — the
works of African American poet
and playwright Ntozake Shange.
Through my extensive study of
Shange’s works, I discovered and
understood the emotional enthrall
of blues singer Etta James, the
groundbreaking and audacious
drama of Lorraine Hansberry,
the linguistic profundity of Toni
Morrison and Alice Walker, the
sheer lyricism of August Wilson’s
language for the stage, the acces
sibility of Maya Angelou’s poet
ry, the “colored contradictions”
in George C. Wolfe’s plays, the
tiffing qualities in Langston
Hughes’s poems, the stunningly
philosophical and intellectual
musings of W.E.B. DuBois, and
the culturally familiar and trans
formative power of humor and
storytelling through the works of
Zora Neale Hurston.
For me, discovering the works
of African American writers
expanded my own imaginative
and spiritual horizon, my own
personal and political belief in
the power of individual and com
munal possibility. Not one of
these ethnic American texts or
ethnic American authors taught
me to “feel oppressed” or to
“hate or resent white people for
African Americans’ or women’s
oppression,” as some white State
of Arizona upper level adminis
trators presume and proclaim.
As a teacher of courses that
interrogate these ethnic American
literary texts and others not typi
cally taught in our still primarily
dead-white-male-centered public
school curricula, I focus all of my
college ethnic studies courses on
the study of texts — language,
narrative structures, points-of-
view, images, symbolisms, and
themes, for example — within
specific local, regional, national,
and global contexts historically,
politically, and socially.
What these ethnic American
authors and their texts offer
me and my classes of mostly
white students at Arizona State
University (and previously at the
University of Alabama) is the
chance to imagine and to experi
ence the world near and far liter
ally and figuratively from mul
tiple and diverse perspectives.
Such texts allow me and my stu
dents to read the world through
the eyes of those who do not nec
essarily look like, think like, and
write like William Shakespeare,
William Blake, Jane Austen,
Tennessee Williams, James
Joyce, Robert Lowell, Chaucer,
or Baudelaire.
More specifically, the world
my students and I visit and com
fortably inhabit in the works of
African American authors is a
world that offers Negro spiritu
als, blues, jazz, hip hop, gos
sip, sermons, folklore, the trope
of signifying, and folktales as
creative and artistic responses
to what cannot always be con
trolled in our personal worlds—
the peculiar and dehumanizing
institution of American slavery,
the nonsensical Jim Crow laws,
the civil rights movement, and
the horrors of lynching, among
other things. Ethnic American
studies courses document, intro
duce, and celebrate a familiar
that is unfamiliar to most whites
and even to most non-whites
precisely because of what State
of Arizona Superintendent Tom
Home calls “ethnic chauvinism”
of those who choose a limited
range of texts that become the
canon and the “classics” that all
have to read, know, and connect
with to be “educated” in our
American system.
Superintendent Horne,
Governor Jan Brewer, and
their supporters would have
us believe that ethnic studies
courses “teach hate and resent
ment toward whites.” They do
not. Superintendent Home,
Governor Brewer, and their sup
porters would have us beheve
that “ethnic studies courses are
designed solely for members of
underrepresented groups” and
that these “are courses taken
solely by members of a particu
lar ethnic group.” They are not.
Superintendent Home, Governor
Brewer, and their supporters
would have us beheve that “eth
nic studies courses teach ethnic
students that they are oppressed.”
They do not.
I personally know of no ethnic
American studies courses that
“promote the overthrow of the
U.S. government,” nor any such
course that “advocates ethnic
solidarity instead of the treatment
of pupils as individuals” (H.B.
2281). Were Superintendent
Home, Governor Brewer, and
their supporters to sit in on an
ethnic American studies course
or two, or better yet read and
discuss with ethnic American
scholars some books, poems,
stories, essays, or plays by ethnic
American authors, surely they—
as truly educated and informed
American citizens-would realize
that these ethnic studies courses
demonstrate the vast range of
what it means to be American,
what it means to be a world citi
zen, and ultimately what it means
to be human.
I am disappointed and surprised
when presumptions become laws
that silence diverse voices and
censor or otherwise whitewash
realities of our shared American
experiences. Disturbingly, the
specifics and the potentiali
ties of the “misguided” April
2010-approved Arizona State
Senate House Bill 2281 does just
that. Mammy and Uncle Tom’s
voices are just as relevant in the
narrative of America as Master
and Mistress’.
Surely Superintendent Home,
Governor Brewer, and their sup
porters know that one voice can
not possibly tell the whole story
of what it means to be American
or what it means to be human
on the planet. Under the right
tutelage, these ethnic studies
courses demonstrate what poet
Maya Angelou contends in her
poem “Human Family”—“that
we are more alike ... than we are
unalike,” that we share a com
mon humanity and a shared mor
tal destiny.
The real truth of the matter,
says poet Essex Hemphill, is that
“Barbie never told Black girls
that they are pretty,” and I have
been racially profiled in Arizona
on at least three occasions as
a transplanted thirteen-year
Arizona resident. Apparently, I
was not wearing my well-man
icured higher education degrees
or my professorial status visibly
enough on my brown-skinned
forehead.
For the record, Superintendent
Home and Governor Brewer, no
ethnic studies course or ethnic lit
erary text taught me about being
racially profiled. I knew and the
offender knew.
A native of Jefferson and
1977 graduate of Jefferson High
School, Dr. Need A. Lester cltairs
both the Department of English
at Arizona State University and
the Board of Directors of the
Arizona Humanities Council.
Nicholson cont’d from JA
Watkins also said he wasn’t
familiar with the document and
wanted to review it.
Maxwell said that delay could
cost the city its charter. Council
member Bobby Crawford
favored moving forward since
the city has spent so much time
working on its charter.
Maxwell said Wheeler is
delaying city action on a number
of issues.
“You held up us on the land
use plan, took away from the
library ... you’ve prolonged our
budget,” he said.
The mayor questioned why
Wheeler didn’t voice his con
cerns about Nicholson’s charter
during public hearings before the
changes were approved by the
council.
“I wasn’t on the council,”
Wheeler said.
“You was in the public,”
Maxwell said. “It was a public
hearing that we already had.”
Wheeler said he did make
some suggested changes to the
charter but Maxwell said those
were tossed out by state attor
neys.
Maxwell vowed that he
wouldn’t sign anything proposed
from Wheeler and the council
member could get an attorney on
the issue.
Former council member Paul
Cartledge said the city had to
hand deliver the revised charter
to the state because Nicholson
spent extra time in the amend
ment process.
“It’s a lot of work to get it fixed
up,” he said.
The next Nicholson City
Council meeting will be Monday,
June 7, at 7 p.m.
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opposed by the JCWSA since
it already has major water
infrastructure in the area. As
a state created authority, the
JCWSA has the legal right
to run water lines anywhere
in Jackson County, including
inside city limits.
The authority also refused
to allow Arcade to “piggy
back” on its system by pro
viding water and allowing
the city to skim a profit off
the service.
Despite that, the
Jackson County Board of
Commissioners at that time
created confusion in the ser
vice delivery document man
dated by the state by stat
ing that the city and author
ity would have a “shared”
area. The authority opposed
that language and said it is
not bound by that language
since the county govern
ment couldn't supersede the
authority's legal power.
Authority leaders argued
that in effect, the BOC had
done the opposite of what
the service delivery docu
ment was supposed to do by
creating overlapping service
areas rather than to prevent
them.
While the language
remains in the document and
is apparently slated to stay
in the new version this year,
the JCWSA has continued to
oppose it. The earlier debate
cooled when the economy
crashed and the property was
sold to another developer.
BOC chairman Hunter
Bicknell told Haynie at last
week's meeting that the
county has no authority over
the JCWSA.
“The problem is, the Water
and Sewer Authority is an
authority,” Bicknell said. “It
is a sub-division of the State
of Georgia and the county
has no authority to dictate to
them what they do or don’t
do. We just legally can’t.”
Although Haynie’s com
ments raised the specter of
a renewed battle with the
JCWSA, the issue at hand
at last week’s meeting was
about a service area in
Maysville along Bob Mann
Road.
Bicknell said that currently,
the road is part of Maysville’s
service delivery area and has
been since 2004.
Neither the JCWSA nor
Maysville have infrastruc
ture on the road, however
Maysville has plans to build
some in the future. Residents
on the road receive their
water from wells at this time,
according to Bicknell.
He also said that the
JCWSA didn't agree to give
up the road in 2004, but it
was given away by the coun
ty. Bicknell said after speak
ing with a JCWSA official,
the JCWSA would be willing
to give an additional ser
vice area to Maysville at the
southern end of the service
area, however Bicknell said
it wasn’t a matter of giving
the area away, because tech
nically Maysville already has
it.
Jackson County GIS
Manager Joel Logan said that
he had been unsuccessful in
getting information from the
Nicholson Water Authority
about its services. The NWA
has also had disputes with the
county water authority and at
one point, lost litigation on a
service area disagreement to
the authority.
Grad tests cont’d from JA
JCCHS was strongest in
Science with a 94 percent pas
sage rate; the school’s weakest
area was Social Studies where
84 percent of students passed.
EJCHS was strongest in
Science with an 88 percent
passage rate and weakest in
Social Studies with a 77 per
cent passage.
Rise Hawley, assistant
superintendent for teaching
and learning for the Jackson
County School System, said
all of the test data will be
reviewed and analyzed dur
ing an administrative retreat
in June.
“Going through the data is
always a major piece of the
administrative retreat and will
continue to be that,” Hawley
said. “(We’re going to try to
figure out) what is the differ
ence between the score this
year and the score last year.
Because there are lots and
lots of good things in place
to support kids, but we’re just
trying to figure out why this
happened. The same kind of
(instructional) things are going
on, but that is a significant
drop.”
One of the key areas that
appeared to drop just about
everywhere was Social
Studies.
State superintendent Kathy
Cox said the social studies
results show the rigor of a
new curriculum in the subject.
This was the first year that the
exam was completely based
on the Georgia Performance
Standards (GPS) curriculum.
“Scores frequently decline
when new assessments are
implemented,” said 2010
Georgia Teacher of the Year
Gwen Desselle, a high school
social studies teacher, in a
statement.
“This test is rigorous, and as
students and teachers become
more familiar with the new
content, scores will increase
just as they did with the previ
ous version of the test and stu
dents will be better prepared.”
Jackson County school
system students who failed
portions of the GHSGT
will be able to participate
in remediation and retesting
July 12-16.
SPLOST cont’d from JA
monetary difference between
Jefferson and Commerce and
the 2000 numbers and 2008 esti
mates. Bryant said Dees told him
Jefferson had agreed to that com
promise.
“Commerce loses $680,000
instead of $1.12 million,” Bryant
told the council.
The plan calls for the municipal
division to utilize 2010 numbers
when the census count is final
ized. Even though Commerce is
on the low-growth side of the
county that suits Bryant.
“We would fare better than
with the 2008 estimates,” he
predicted. “The estimates were
based on building permits. There
are a lot of empty houses out
there. You’re using an estimate
you may not have a population to
go with - you just have an empty
subdivision.”
Jackson County will continue
to take more than 63 percent of
the total, regardless of what per
centage of the population it winds
up with in the 2010 census.
Voters will be asked in
November to approve the next
round of SPLOST funding.
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