Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Dec. 15, 1960, edition 1 / Page 2
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EDITORIALS Never Forget That These Editorials Art The Opinion Of One Man, . ■ .; 1 • »■ And He May Be Wrong. The Mess In Africa Except for the terrible individual trage dies suffered by thousands of people— black and white—The Mess In Africa 'would be the laugh of the century. ' A weary old Congo chieftain, recently di vested of several hundred wives, summed up the problem by admitting that freedom bad be^n given to his people before they (were ready for it. On the surface he may have been moaning the loss of his wife servants, but with equal certainty he was bound to have understood the philosophical incapacity of his people for freedom. But this aged chieftain’s complaint gives ,gise to an even more profound philosophical question: When will his people be ready for freedom? ■ Anthropology and archaeology each in dicates that homo sapiens first reared up <on his hind legs somewhere in Equatorial Africa. It is also undisputed that civiliza tion fifst flourished along the shores of the (Mediterranean in areas contiguous to this same area. ' remaps geography Had some part m /confining civilization in Africa to the Med iterranean shoreline, and in more recent /times to the range of the white man’s camjp (fire. But the saime seed of civilization when /planted on the north shore of the Med iterranean—among savages even more i fierce than the Africans—spread like a wild (fire, across Europe in all directions and finally across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere. ; While a thousand years of ferment was /bubbling and foaoping over into- the far reaches of the world, Africa, the cradle of ptankxnd remained pre-historic until this very day. Not a tribe in Africa made use of the wheel—or even copied the wheel af ter being exposed to this most basic toed of civilisation. Cannibalism remained their <rntor answer to protein-starvation because ip the midst of protein plenty no tribe of (age to village if the next village’s basic in- ' (terest was in eating its neighbors. Occa sionally a more shrewd chieftain would tie a few families together into a loose con federation based always on absolute auto cracy for that chieftain. Into this political heritage enters the missionary white mam, with his religious and political absolutism. With food and (kindness and medicine he tracts a bandfull • of these simple savages. The more apt of these is sent to further bis education a broad. Those. Who return come back laden with an intolerable burden. Pride in their race cannot be squared with the abyss that lies, between his father and the outside world. iSome such heavily laden young men threw off their yokes of outside education and become more native than before. Others as pire to the political catchwords of which ever nation they went to for an education. These are the Lumumbas, the Kasavubus, the ■Mobutos. They are children playing a dult games. The outside world snickers be hind their backs as they strut and posture upon the United Nations stage. Their own world fears and distrusts them. Civiliza tion in the Congo has been restricted .to rifle' range and beyond the Law of The Jungle is Supreme, as it has been since time be gan. White civilization required something near 12,000 years to reach .the levels of freedom and responsibility that are the fundamental requisites of representative (government. ji ' Black civilization with the example of the Whites spread Before them may Be aide to Shorten this evolutionary process, but k icannot be done in a day, or even in one or foro generations. Habits, superstitions are not so easily shed. Something lies between It., ..■tjukV, AMtkn' Ail yint— ~ The Gold Problem the ste tural n Foreign ft a r year 'he years, while a%rw—^ ultimately there has to ir.ig day. This applies to dividuals. f Now in its last days the Esenfcower Ad ministration is exhibiting its absolute in capacity for intelligent action by thrashing around with a handful of absurd suggestions for stopping the growing gold imbalance. Now with operational inter-continental missiles at least claimed by the aimed forces the need for huge establishments of troops abroad is ended. The European gar risons of American troops could not possibly atop a non-atomic blitz, by vastly superior Russian numbers. The presence of. Ameri can troops in Europe and the Orient are not deterrents militarily; they obviously are economic drags on our own nation /and in the arena of international diplomacy they are exhoitritantiy expensive. So long as a platoon of American troops iS in Japan, Germany or Korea they are a propaganda foil for the Russians. If we Two More Inequities Two news items o€ this week—one from Kinston and the other from Elizabeth City point again to deliberate inequities that are being visited upon un-resistkig taxpayers, i The state board of education has ap proved a community college for Elizabeth City and will use state funds to supplement money being voted by Pasquotank Oountians for this college—state funds to which tax payers in every township in North Caro lina contribute. •> " In Kinston the city school board has found in searching for policy on city school transportation that, insofar as the state school board is concerned, there is no po licy. • An intenmin report to the Kinston school board Mbnday night revealed these “po licies” on transportation: - 1. All rural Schools have transportation furnished to students living more than 1% miles from their school with all funds sup plied from the state school board. v 2. Six towns now provide .transportation for some of their students. „ i 3. To some of these six towns the entire cost of this transportation is paid by the estate board of education. 4. To others of these city school systems the cost of the operation is split between thfe school district and the state board of education. ' , 5. And finally some of these city school districts pay the total bill, with no help from the state board of education. For a city school board, to find its way through such a bureacratic jungle is next to impossMe. For the individual taxpayer to find morahty in this octopus-like “poli cy” is beyond possibility. imerican white society would fail the same ■lest, tat percentage-wise any fair analysis iwouM support this claim. Democracy and representative govern ment are no more possible in the Congo, or in the rest of Equatorial Africa than in a to ctje. . •: They are NOT ready for freedom. When they w.H be ready lor- freedom depends upon too many imponderables fo? a- speci fic guess, but certainly not until mass ixrsrg&Lfi&tf f gold memo and serve at the same time the incalculable propaganda service .of leaving Russian military might exposed and unexplainable from East Germany to Ndrth Korea. . A move of this kind, coupled to a search ing re-appraisal of the foreign aid pro gram would yield tremendous savings tor the taxpayers and put the" national budget and gold balance on safer ground: PERSONAL • PARA6RAPHS . BY ■ JACK RIPER There is an old saying that the squeak ing wheel gets the greaste. In government this is a particularly apt expression. For the past five year® I have .been' “squeak ing” about school busses for -the Kinston Grade School District. Now at least a com mittee bas my .squeak under studyt and I ■hope that, a “little grease” Will be applied in the next school budget. At present all 100 of the rural school systems in North Carolina have school busses, but only six of the 70-odd city school systems have busses and not more than one or two of these receives any help from the state school board for the expen ses of their busses. .Why people so generally volatile.as North Carolinians have stood for this gross in- ■ equity this long is completely beyond my understanding. No one has the slightest' objection to paying taxes to aggpqnt school busses for rural school children, hut when in city systems ta great percentage of pu pils live just as far from their school as the rural students there is absolutely no .good reason why they should not get the same kind of transportation. Over the years since I began complain ing about this situation a few people have begun to join in the fight. Both Dr. Rachel Dayis and Cameron Langston this spring pledged their support for city school busses. Afore and more parents who are hard hit by the cost of keeping two automobiles are getting into this act. Now the City Parent-Teacher Associa tion Council has endorsed the idea, and bas offered to lend all support it can to toe 'solution. Some members of toe school board agree that a program of public school transportation is not only a necessity, but is a basic ethic which cannot he denned a student who lives on, for instance, the south side of Cunningham Road, while his cousin' who lives on the north side of bunn ingham Road, is hauled to and from the county schools. There is another side to the problem in Lenoir County, Every year the busses from the rural system probe; deeper and deeper Into the Kinston Graded School district. There are two reasons for this: 1. the re quests of parents who are seeking fr^e transportation for their children and 2. The' understandable desire of rural school prin cipals to increase-the enrollments of their school since they get an additional # per month added' to their paycheck for each teacher in their school. /
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Dec. 15, 1960, edition 1
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