RE: Red Whit and Brown

The latest blog post “Red White and Brown,” by Mike Youngblood, is about the city of Austin officially being a white-minority city, applying to the population under 18. Youngblood believes that “hatemongering is sure to come” because of predictions that the youth population will be a minority-majority by 2020 and the nation as a whole by 2043. I agree with that statement. The growing minority population is certain to bring up many differences among the nations population.

I do not feel like this is a racial commentary and I agree with Youngblood, that this is a racial over-sensitive society. There are still many racial issues in America, but people are too quick to accuse others of being racist.  I am also glad that the minority population is growing, but I do not think that it will “equalize” us. As long as there is a majority and a minority, there will always be differences among them two. We can only hope that the majority, who was the minority, will stop the racism, but that is very unlikely. As Youngblood put it “I’d hate to be a white child in certain parts of Detroit.” Even if the racism stopped on the minority-majority end, that still will not change how the white racists feel. Some people’s minds are just stuck “in an ignorant time and place.”

This was a well put together blog post. I like the way that Youngblood associated racist behaviors as “ignorant beliefs,” and that those beliefs were from “an ignorant time and place.” Racism is ignorance! The lack of knowledge and culture of a society to another makes people to perceive the differences in them, not the similarities. We are all humans, and I think most of us want the same things in one way or another.

Next Years Budget - Bad for Students!

                House Bill 1 has passes the House with a 98-49 vote, and now it is turned over to the Texas Senate. The Bill is for the Texas State budget fiscal year of 2012-2013. The bill reduces the budget by is $23 billion from last year's budget. According to the bill, many cuts are being made to public education! It also “cuts state funding for colleges and universities by more than 10 percent”, which is bad news for students like you and I (Embry). I think that the Senate should vote against this bill and revise it, so that more money is allocated to public education. The state of Texas is one of the fastest growing states in population, and with more people come more students.  Texas schools rank close to last, if not last, in performance compared to the rest of the states. It does not seem logical to cut the budget for education, when it obviously needs more money! The Bill is not going to increase taxes to raise money that is needed for education and other social services. Governor Rick Perry says “you cannot tax or spend your way to prosperity, and Texans expect their elected leaders to govern under that truth when it comes to taxpayer dollars”. Part of that is true, but I think that raising taxes would be the only logical thing to do, to make up for money that is required to run the education system and social services. They should let themselves and tax payers hold the burden of their mistakes, not Texan students. Hopefully the Texas Senate will come to their senses and change the bill to allocate the appropriate amount of money toward public education.