A Dream Deferred

"THAT'S IT! I'M A BAGEL ON A PLATE OF ONION ROLLS!" FUNNY GIRL

On Thursday, by a vote of 53 to 47, a largely partisan vote, the first Negro woman to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court was approved upon the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate, an elected body in the legislature, of one hundred popularly elected representatives from fifty states that includes 24 popularly elected women, a body that has had only 232 Negroes in its ranks in its entire history, a body where people of color comprise only eleven percent of the top job staff jobs, in a record breaking, or history making Senate class where 23% are designated as persons of color. And, according to Negro Senator from New Jersey, five years from now, nobody will even remember what the vote was, nor probably the questions about the appointed justices former decisions as a judge, if you think about it. But, for the sake of history, what is the true measure of success or failure?

The first African American elected to the County Board in Arlington was not elected until the year after the first African American was elected to student body office at a private elite college in the Shenandoah, and many folks want to get rid of the African American who is serving on the County Board now. It was not until the year after Barack Obama was elected to the White House that an African American was elected to the Arlington Public School Board, a school board that was completely replaced to avoid implementing the desegregation plan decree issued by the Supreme Court in the landmark Brown decision, and took five years, and an additional federal court order to do so, and in public schools where an achievement gap remains unabated, not even one member of the Arlington NAACP decided to run to replace the sole African American who was serving on the school board, but they got upset, and joined with the Arlington GOP, who also presented no candidates, after the election was over to cry about the early caucus held by the Arlington Democrats being unfair. Some people, just like to complaint, on all evidence, and wonder why they never get anything.

A salesman, like Don Beyer, will tell ya, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, which just makes common sense, but a soldier will tell ya that piss poor planning yields piss poor results, and you have a pandemic, breakthrough infections, a virus that has fooled you before, and this virus, apparently, isn't stupid, according to the nation's top doctors.