Take a Cool Guess—The Fun Quiz on Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability. Today’s Topic: Racism and Sustainability

Question:  In what time period of American history was the photo at the left taken, featuring the Ku Klux Klan at the courthouse in Hillsborough, North Carolina? What are the current trends in hate crime in America?

Answer: Can be found at Clean Energy Answers.

Relevance:  When we think of the most visible, most revolting examples of racism in America post-abolition, we tend to think of the Jim Crow period of the first half of the mid-20th Century. Sadly, we’ve all come to realize recently that culturally, very few gains of material importance have been made.  Achieving a sustainable society will be required of people of compassion and inclusion, not hateful morons in white hoods.

In truth, the word “moron” is incorrect, though that is the impression these people commonly evoke.  It’s ignorance, as opposed to a defect intelligence.  There may be studies suggesting that these people are of low IQ, but there is more than ample evidence that they are uneducated.

To segue to education, our desire for a sustainable society will go nowhere in the absence of our insistence for solid education. Can’t we make the onslaught against it?

The other day I met a teacher in a school district within one of the more rural “God and country” regions of my home in Santa Barbara County, California; certainly a Trump-supporting area of the state. I asked him about the faculty’s acceptance of Donald Trump, and I was taken by what he said, which I paraphrase as: “Politics does not figure into educators’ political philosophy very much.  Our lifes’ work is helping our country’s children learn.  Anyone who thinks that the current Secretary of Education (Betsy DeVos) is on our side is insane; not misinformed,  but insane.”

Bold words, worth remembering.