Common Sense

I didn’t read the actual paper for Monday, I left early last night to go home. But when I read the letters to the editor online, this one struck me as being overtly racist. His line of demarcation for when things turned bad in Waco ISD is integration in the 1960s.

Don’t diss old-time Wacoans

Carlos Sanchez tried to convey light-heartedness in his dissing of old-time Wacoans in his Aug. 13 column [“Beware the rise of NWWs (Non-Waco Wacoans)”], but the cynicism and arrogance seeped through.

In 1947 I graduated from maybe the best high school in Texas. I was a very proud Waco High Tiger. We had a 150-piece band and a state champion football team.

Our graduates had no trouble getting into colleges. Discipline and order were kept by the principal with the aid of male teachers. Very few students dropped out.

The ’60s brought school integration (busing and all) with the promise that it would assure all students the same educational opportunity and ensure the assimilation of the races into our society, equally educated and thus strengthening state and nation.

Some 40 years after integration, Waco High now has chronic discipline problems. The district has a police force of a chief, two commanders and 10 patrol officers.

In our neighboring Midway ISD, the high school has one female security officer [Waco PD] with enrollment now approaching that of Waco High.

Charley Tarver

Waco

Reading the Sanchez column he referenced, I’m not even sure what this guy took offense at or what his letter was supposed to refute. It’s one thing to write about how not being born in Waco means you’ll never be “from Waco,” and its entirely another pointing to the end of segregation as the cause of a school districts problems.

Maybe its because I’m not “from Waco” but “from McGregor” just 15 miles West that I don’t get what the hell any of the things in this letter have to do with the column in question.