"Barbecue" Rymes with "Argue"

Though mostly good natured arguing. Because at the heart of the matter, we are talking about sharing food with family, community, and culture,. Sauce and style have become more of a team effort in the internet age. Wear your Eastern Carolina jersey proudly, y'all, I'll be over here onboard the Southern Soul train reppin' Island City barbecue 'till I die.

Where I grew up in Georgia, we had a lot of barbecue at a lot of different places. Some was pork, some was beef, some was chicken or sausage or venison cooked over the same coals. Because if you've already got the coals working, what's the harm in more meat over the fire?

There was usually a selection of sauces: vinegar based, tomato based, mustard based. There were even flavors: hot, sweet, and regular. And you could order it chopped or pulled.

Now that I live in New Orleans, there is cochon-de-lait. Which is either very similar or entirely different from "barbecue" depending on who you are talking to. And, of course, barbecue shrimp - which is its own culinary category altogether.

For some folks, "barbecue" is a noun: the pork and/or beef that is cooked for a long time at "low" heat over a pit of coals. Chicken or sausage or venison didn't count as "barbecue," but were just the sauce covered side-items to the "barbecue."

For others "barbecue" is the verb of cooking any or all meats at "low" heat over a pit of coals. As someone who grew up in Coastal Georgia, this is the closest to my cultural upbringing.

Though there is one line I draw with my inclusiveness: grillin' is not barbecue.

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Integration As Social Engineering

At least, according to the Tea Party of North Carolina. (HT: Maitri)

So, what is it, folks? School choice works until at-risk students are able to choose or are placed in the affluent suburban schools? When that happens, we go back to districts and neighborhood schools, which could concentrate at risk student populations? And this is justified because the previous system, with real flaws to be sure, is some sort of "social engineering" forced upon you by "radical leftists."

And critics expressed alarm that the plan would create a handful of high-poverty, racially isolated schools, a scenario that the new majority has begun embracing.

Pope, who is a former state legislator, said he would back extra funding for such schools.

"If we end up with a concentration of students underperforming academically, it may be easier to reach out to them," he said. "Hypothetically, we should consider that as well."

(Emphasis HR.)

So, to address the problem of "diluting" the at-risk populations into adequately resourced schools, the idea is to "concentrate" the at-risk populations in racially isolated schools, to make them easier to identify and recieve additional resources.

Because in all my time in the South, the at-risk, economically depressed, racially isolated schools always recieved the resources they needed to adequately educate their students. < / dripping, biting sarcasm > It it weren't for those radical leftist social engineers, everything would be fine.

Maybe if those schools had actually recieved adequate resources in the first damn place, there wouldn't be a need for all this legally-mandated integration "social engineering" to address the very real inequalities that resulted from the previous system that concentrated at-risk populations in racially isolated schools as a matter of policy.

It was called Jim Crow.

Maybe you've heard of it.

Our nation just celebrated a holiday in rememberance of the most beloved leader of the movement that consigned that national moral failure to the shameful dust bin of history.

That's the reason there was a Civil Rights Movement. That's the reason we have legally mandated integration. That's the reason cultural and economic integration has not happened on a larger scale, nor as organically as we Americans like to tell ourselves it would: because of educational disparities resulting from specific policies of the past that continue replicating the legacy of that shameful past with each successive generation.

That's the reason the libertarian wet-dream utopia of American history sets dangerous precedent - the market was left alone and changed nothing for nearly a this nation's entire scope of history. Despite every economic incentive to integrate. Despite every economic incentive to liberalize and rapidly expand education to include all Americans.

And the folks responsible or advocating this retroactive change can wash their hands of the inherent racism of these policies all they want - I'll take them at their word that the policies they want to enact aren't done so with a hint of racism in their own conscious thoughts.

Bless their hearts, they aren't racists, they're just jaw droppingly ignorant of their own national history. We've been down this road before, and it didn't work.

Hell, we're still traveling down this road in many parts of the country, and especially in the South. Imagine how dynamic our regional economy would be with a highly moderately reasonably educated population? We're still dealing with the concentrated poverty, racial targeting and inadequate educational opportunities every day on the streets. Especially in the South.

Does your current system have flaws? I'm sure it does. Nothing is perfect, and we Americans have the ability to constantly make changes for the better. There's nothing wrong with that.

My problem comes from the idea that the current way of doing things doesn't have a starting point. Espeically when the popular remedy to what ails you is to resurrect the policies that the current system was constructed to correct. Not only that, but resurrect the policies whose legacy directly caused the problems your current system is experiencing.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is broke, try not to fix it by doing whatever it was broke it in the first damn place.

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