posted on July 11, 2001 03:50:03 PM newIt's most unusual for a reporter to describe an individual as wearing *clean* pants.
Jeez, do you look at a line of white laundry and see a Klan rally?
Groundskeeping is a toilsome, often dirty job. That's a fact. The description of Joe Lee Gibson maintaining a clean, crisp appearance is just another example of the extra pride he adds to his work. It has nothing to do with racism.
posted on July 11, 2001 03:51:47 PM new
Joe is not some ignorant poor black man living on cornbread and goat's milk in the back woods.
Joe is a man who spent his life working and while he never received a formal education he made darn sure his children did.
He is a far wiser sounding person than those here who have declared him stupid, poor and an Uncle Tom just to satisfy their own preceived ideas of how black people live.
posted on July 11, 2001 03:52:21 PM newHJW: we all endure. Very few in this world do not have some hardship to get over--illiteracy is hardly one of the worst.
posted on July 11, 2001 03:53:38 PM new
Though the article included a picture enabling us to know Joe's color, I'm sure that everyone there knew that beforehand.
And to make much of his spiffiness as though that marked him as different from the expected norm was part of why I find this objectionable. What if he was white, or asian, or hispanic you ask? To me that's not the issue. The issue is whether Joe would have received anything at all were he scruffy and abhorrent yet still performed as he had. It's like he was selected, as I said, as a model for others and because he gave a respectable image to place on display.
What sort of thing do these people think they've created? A model for others (blacks) in the community? Can't you hear the reaction of local younger blacks in the area? "Sure, he work all his life and that's what he get? A plaque? Sucka' cain't even read no plaque".
It might have served their purpose better to give him an honorary degree and a chance to be tutored to read. But that would require someones's name on a record, and a little expenditure of monies. Hard to justify that for an old man. Give him a plaque!
Perhaps it would be more acceptable to categorize poor Mr. Gibson as the pitiable remnant of a slave society...forever doomed to supercilious mention...never receiving his due...past or present. And god forbid his picture should be shown...his face, after all, is black. Which, of course, would negate the legitimacy of any award he should be given.
Of course, I certainly did not mean that illeteracy was the worst thing that this fellow had to endure. Just staying alive and well in Mississippi is an endurance test in itself.
posted on July 11, 2001 04:00:43 PM new"It was a writer's device, that's all -- to highlight the contrast between an uneducated laborer and the institution of higher education where he is employed. The reporter would have done the same thing had Joe Lee Gibson been white."
Well, actualy I don't know if that is true and at the risk of being flamed here, I cannot even say for sure this article would have been done at all had Joe Lee not been black.
Like I said, I see both views at work here.
I would like to think it would have been done regardless of race.
Yes, indeedy, I believe this person accomplished a great deal in his life. I do not want anyone thinking I can't see what he has accomplished and the odds that were against him. Being unable to read and write is tough even for someone "white". Add the fact this man was "black" and in Mississippi and it does say a lot....even if that fact is not recognized or acknowledged!
However, I have to vote with hjw someone should have taught him to read and write. Even if it was his college educated children!
posted on July 11, 2001 04:07:10 PM newI have to vote with hjw someone should have taught him to read and write. Even if it was his college educated children!
The fact that we recognize the societal problems that contributed to Mr. Gibson's illiteracy is a step in the right direction. It's an indication that we are not overlooking the preceeding cruelty that he had to endure.
posted on July 11, 2001 04:11:39 PM newHowever, I have to vote with hjw someone should have taught him to read and write. Even if it was his college educated children!
Of course, it could be that his children offered & he declined...we don't know.
And there's the fact that there was really nothing stopping him from learning to read if he had the desire. Yes, the man had a full plate working to support his wife & children. The fact that he made sure all his kids went to college showed he valued education for them. But OTHER people, regardless of race, have had the same burden--and still learned to read as adults. There's night school--local high schools & junior colleges sponsor reading classes. There's the public library--many of which have *free* literacy classes, not to mention tapes & videos to check out. As has been said, he *could* have learned from his kids.
For whatever reason, Mr. Gibson never learned to read. But it has been well over a hundred years since it has been illegal for black people to learn how to read, so it is ridiculous to place all blame for his failure to do so on "evil", "racist" society.
"By now the figures are familiar: there are said to be 20 million to 40 million adults nationwide who cannot read and write and add well enough to perform ordinary tasks like passing a driver's-license test, reading a warning label on a medicine bottle, and--Bryant Mack's goal--balancing a checkbook. What is not so well known is that a disproportionate number of America's functional illiterates, black and white, live in the South, where their economic situation is deteriorating rapidly."
"When education fervor swept the United States after Russia's launching of Sputnik, the deep South was preoccupied with school desegregation and the civil-rights movement. The Mississippi legislature repealed legislation that made schooling compulsory, and encouraged white flight from the public schools by allowing the schools to deteriorate."
""The ideal of universal education was itself absent in Mississippi," Winter, now a lawyer in Jackson, the state capital, told me recently.
The anti-intellectualism of the rural South often attached more importance to football and cheerleading than to learning to read local authors like Eudora Welty and William Faulkner. Some fathers quit their jobs, and sons left school, on the first day of hunting season; a vestigial frontier mentality held that "too much book learnin' ruins your shootin' eye." And it is often said in Bible Belt churches that "Satan can quote Scripture"--even if the deacons can't. In Mississippi 714,000 adults--46 percent of the state's adult population--lack high school diplomas. Roughly 400,000 adult Mississippians have less than nine years of schooling, a level that is often used as a definition of functional illiteracy."
"Certainly this definition makes for a conservative estimate of illiteracy, given that Mississippi high schools share the national tendency to graduate anyone who occupies a desk long enough. "I went through twelve years of school and two years of community college without ever learning to read, and passed with flying colors," Treaise Williams, a twenty-five-year-old woman in Jackson, told me. "I found out early that if I was always the teacher's pet, they wouldn't fail me. I always listened real good to what the teachers said. When you can't read, you figure out all kinds of ways round your handicap. A lot of times illiterates are intelligent, but they been made to feel dumb." "
"Nationwide more than half the adults who enter literacy-training programs simply abandon the effort after a few sessions of instruction, without having improved their reading skills. In Mississippi only 10 percent of adults stay with literacy classes long enough to complete two workbooks of the standard Laubach method of reading. "
posted on July 11, 2001 04:29:02 PM new"Of course, it could be that his children offered & he declined...we don't know"
Yes, that is true. Wonder how the article would have read had the reporter asked him why he had never learned to read or write with all those years on the campus? Wonder what the tone of the article would have been then? As is, I could not help but get the impression that a point was being made about this gentleman's "endurance".
Dispite all of that, I still feel this man is to be admired, if for no other reason, than number of years he spent with the same job. I gathered from the article he truly enjoyed his work, so he stayed...how many of us can boast the same????
Me, I really never found anything I liked doing for longer than a few years! I still haven't been able to make a career choice and I fear I am running out of time!
spelling
[ edited by sulyn1950 on Jul 11, 2001 04:32 PM ]
posted on July 11, 2001 04:42:40 PM new
That's right, Bunnicula. The schools in Mississippi are substandard by anyone's measure. They have consistently spent less per child on education than any state in the nation.
Then on top of that problem add segregation and you can see the overwhelming problem that people such as poor Mr. Gibson had to deal with.
The folks who gave him this plaque had the resources to give him what he really deserved when he was a young boy and they did not.
They must be suffering from an overwhelming sense of guilt...and maybe giving this plaque will help to alleviate their pain.
[ edited by sulyn1950 on Jul 11, 2001 04:32 PM ]