Tonight Tom Brokaw aired an hour-long special called “Separate and Unequal”. In it, he followed 3 Lanier High School students through a year of classes and talked about the challenges they faced. Lanier is pretty much all-black, so it was really a special on how far (or not so far) blacks have advanced since segregation was finally outlawed.

In short, one student graduated and is on her way to college. One student had a child, at 17, and wound up dropping out of school her senior year and narrowly failing her GED exam. The third student was kicked off the basketball team for poor grades & missed practices, and finally flunked at the end of the year (With averages in the 50′s).. MSNBC has archived alot of the text and some of the video here, and it’s worth checking out. They did talk about the recent increase in crime in Jackson, and they even followed Frank Melton around Jackson as he visited people. Unfortunatey, they did not get into any of the more unusual things he’s done lately like the State of Emergency and the Homeless Curfews.

While he did a pretty good job discussing the problems teens, of any race really, face in today’s schools, he seemed to flounder around a bit without really offering any information or ideas on how to remedy it. He showed several success stories, and several failures, but never really spoke about what specifically made them different. Was it the schools? Was it the family? Was it rap music? (That, actually, did come up in the show but was quickly dismissed). One thing I think he really left out was the poor state of Mississippi’s industrial sector. He wanted a story that would apply to any city across the US, but I think cities in Mississippi are unique compared to most others because of the simple lack of opportunities. In Meridian, it seemed the choice was always a) College, b) Peavey, or c) Auto mechanic. Sadly, things haven’t changed much since I graduated. In Jackson, simply switch Peavey for Nissan.

The new Nissan plant has done alot for North Jackson, specifically Madison and Canton. Unfortunately, it only impacts a small portion of the state and with reports like 4 of the 5 vehicles produced there top Consumer Reports Least Reliable list, it’s questionable how much longer they’ll stick around. Alot of people’s hopes were riding on the Kia plant, but those dreams seems to have been just that. I hear more and more of people taking tele-commute jobs out -of-state. In fact, my own dad has a job in Texas but continues to live in Meridian. There are a few technical jobs in Mississippi, such as the 2 MSRC‘s and the thriving Medial Sector, but those are small and very selective. With so many technical jobs and people leaving Mississippi for greener pastures, is it any surprise that all that remains is the few people incapable (or unwilling) to leave? If all the graduates see people is the people “left behind”, is it any surprise that they “don’t know how to succeed” (as Brokaw put it repeatedly in his broadcast).
[tag:nbc][tag:tombrokaw][tag:mississippi]

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