There is an old story about four generations of women preparing a holiday meal. The granddaughter asked her mom why she always cut the ends off the ham before baking it. The Mom asked the grandmother why she did it. The grandmother asked the great-grandmother. The great-grandmother replied: "I don't know why all of you do it; I did it because my pan was too small."
And so Nettleton, Mississippi is in the national spotlight, and by association, Mississippi is in the national spotlight for a practice that from the outside sure sounds racist. It was reported that a letter was sent home to middle school students specifying that each of the class offices was restricted to one race. Class president had to be white. vice president black, and so on. A local family, new to the area, had mixed racial children and they were a) horrified at the restrictions, and b) insulted that their children were assigned a race. Rightfully so. Who wouldn't be?
I am of an age that I was in high school when Georgia completed racial integration. I went to a "black" high school in Columbus, Georgia. Some of the schools in Columbus tried the alternating officer scheme and same type of arrangement for homecoming court. In the day- 70s- you could see the reasoning. An attempt to be inclusive during the difficult transition. Our school leaders chose to let the students work it out among us. The year after I graduated they had the first white homecoming queen and there was a walkout protest at the pep rally where it was announced.
I suspect that in Nettleton, like in many schools, a temporary solution became a long standing practice. No one thought to question whether it had outlived its utility. Until now. And now, for cutting off the ends of the ham after we got a larger baking pan, Mississippi is once again portrayed as living in the racist past. Unfair? Perhaps. Conservative communities don't tend to reexamine practices much. Perhaps they should.
Edited from a blog on Clarion-Ledger