Of the '60s and bus driver nightmares...

I'm a goddamn hippie.

This war in Vietnam is bullshit.

Impeach President Johnson...

...and Hendrix is awesome.

Sorry, I'm just in a 1960s sort of mood today. Mainly because I read this article.

Yeah, I'll approach the issue with caution because I am skeptical of the media, I don't know the entire story, and I do know how bad kids on the bus could be.

But man, you gotta know that this doesn't look good on its face.

Bus driver, in the south, in Louisiana, where racial tensions haven't exactly been LOW lately, makes black kids, but not the white kids, go to sit in the back of the bus.

I'm sorry, but I'd really like to ask the bus driver, "Why would you even chance it?"

Then again, who knows? This is the South, and though I love certain aspects of the South (namely the hospitality and the beaches of South Carolina), many people still consider their citizens backwards, and it might be because stories like this keep popping up.

Well, that, and the fact that they tried the most inane and nonsensical excuses to try and uphold segregation and other forms of racism in the 1960s. If you can find them, see the Supreme Court cases of Loving v. Virginia (holding that interracial marriage cannot be outlawed by state statute) and Cooper v. Aaron (where Arkansas pretty much asked if they could disregard an order of the Supreme Court to prevent integration of their schools. The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision, said, um, No). The justifications that the segregationists put up were pretty silly, to say the least. You'll have trouble believing that people once thought this way.

Or maybe you won't.

So... here we are, nearly 40 years after the last Civil Rights Act was passed, still talking about this stuff, still remembering it as if Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus just yesterday. I'm not saying that we should ever forget the lessons of history (and certainly we should not, as our President has shown), but I am saying that it's sad that we must still so vividly remember it, with stories like the one above, one with so much similarity to those days that it makes me feel like I might just be growing up in the 1960s (you know, that coupled with a war-hungry Texan in the White House, a pointless war with high casualties, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young on tour, and political dissension everywhere...gosh, it's more like the '60s than I thought).

So... Southerners... you're still drawing national attention for issues such as these. Please start asking yourselves if there is anything you can do to fix these situations. If there is, start doing it. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Southerners, I really do, but I hate hearing stories like these. These stories keep people in the North saying, "Southerners are backward, NASCAR-watching, beer guzzling hicks." I should note that I am a NASCAR fan myself, and I hate that sort of image as much as some proud Southerners do. Hell, why is there still this "political" distinction between "North" and "South?"

And please, Southerners, don't say, "To hell with you, I am what I am." What you are (indeed, what we all are) is a part of the United States, a nation whose government has went out of its way to solve these problems as best they can. Yes, they've been doing a pretty poor job of it lately, but strides have been made.

I admit, I'm not a Southerner, and I don't understand everything about being a Southerner. It's just that something's got to give with these things, you know? Something's just got to be done.

And soon.