R.I.P. Rosa Parks

I graduated with an engineering degree from an engineering college.

I always knew that I'd graduate. I hadn't put enough work into my degree to have earned a sense of ownership and pride, instead I just skated through on natural abilities.

I was excited about who our commencement speaker would be. I was looking forwards to some geek who had developed something whiz-bang. When I heard that it would be Rosa Parks I was dismayed. I tried to listen, but never heard a word she said.

The only real dealings I've had with blacks were on the college football team, but then again we were all (mostly) engineering majors who wanted to play football past highschool. Not a nigger amongst them (in fact, every niggardly person I've ever known has been white).

While in college I had a date with a Negress, not just a pretty face, but a beautiful face and a lithe athletic body that spoke of power and speed (she had the 440 record at some high school in Detroit), but was oh so feminine. I never heard a conscious thought eminate from her mind and while some dim, yet undeveloped part of my brain suspected that she was smitten, I remained with the cerebrial challenge of playing Risk with my friends as my major form of enjoyment. That and partridge hunting, beer drinking, and cross country skiing (as the seasons permitted).

That was it, one date. Then my parents found out and exploded, which surprised me. My dad was the radical science teacher in the early 70's with the moustache that so offended the sensitive and proper school board. My parents are the Liberal Democrats who pretend to think they are Republicans.

The same people who couldn't stop talking about how nice it was when the huge black linebacker brought his white girlfriend over for Easter dinner had conniption fits at the thought of their son kissing a black woman. This was when I realized the level and magnitude of racism that negros face every day, at times coming from directions least expected.

Tying this into Billy D's Conspiracy Wednesday, I could almost see the CIA killing Martin Luther King in an ongoing effort to keep the black man down, but then I see the Rev. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Luis Farrakan, et al, and I figure that they do a pretty good job of it themselves without any help.

Maybe Rosa Parks was just tired that day or maybe her act of civil disobediance came from a deep well of moral courage. I don't know. I do applaude her for the respect that she earned that day. I just wish they would have picked an astronaut or someone who worked on the Manhattan Project to speak at my commencement.