http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/91415
…A Georgia state senator has proposed that two Historically Black Colleges be merged with public institutions that are located in the same city.
State Senator Seth Harp, a Republican, and chair of the the legislative body’s higher education committee is making his case partly based on economics–the state must close a $2.2 billion budget shortfall and cut higher education spending by eight percent–and because he believes that segregationist history has run its course for the two historically black schools in his proposal, Albany State University and Savannah State University.
A CBC report discusses the Georgia senator who wants to amalgamate some of the state’s “historically black colleges” into other schools. The reporter confirms that the economic reality shows this would be efficient, but listening to the senator (a self-declared “son of the South” Republican who admits he’s taking advantage of the economy to make a point), it’s obvious his motives are reactionary rather than pecuniary. He’s using the Brown vs. Board of Ed ruling from the 1950s to force amalgamation into a neighbouring college. It isn’t a closed school – the college in question is 6% white. Typical redneck reversal of the point of the desegregation law.
The senator’s smug statements put me in mind of a PBS series on Reconstruction. The descendant of a rebel who menaced and murdered Northern electoral observers gloatingly announced that, though the North won the war, the South “won” Reconstruction. Amazing to think that there are still people mourning Southern society (with its emphasis on white superiority) 144 years after the war ended.