It's Not Fair!

Yesterday I posted about people worrying too much about what other people are doing, or what is happening to other people. I may not have made it clear that I understand that we, as human beings, have an innate sense of fair play. To be honest, a lot of us (myself included) feel like things should be exactly equal, all the way across the board, except for ourselves--we should be a little 'more equal' than everybody else. To be honest, I think most of us get at least a little bent out of shape when we see someone else getting the short end of the stick for no apparent reason; especially if that person happens to be of a different race than ourselves.

In 1954, the US Supreme Court ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The case in point, it was common practice in the early fifties for a town to have several 'white' schools, and one 'colored' school. The 'colored' school was usually the oldest school building in the local school system, whether it actually had enough classrooms to suit the needs of the students. In addition, whenever one of the white schools got new desks or new books, the old desks or books went to the 'colored' school. The African-American kids never got new desks or new textbooks (generally they didn't even get current textbooks). Is separate but equal possible? I would think so, but extremely unlikely. By putting kids in the same classroom without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin, everybody gets the same education--barring indiscretions from the teacher, of course (but even some of the white kids will complain if their sense of fair play is violated--even if the victim of the teacher's actions is not white).

God gave us a sense of fair play, but sometimes it works against us, because we don't see the whole picture. It doesn't help any that, not only are we limited by our own senses, but, frequently, we are limited by what others perceive and pass on to us. Sometimes people tell us things that they believe to be true, that turn out to be nothing more than gossip. We don't always pick up on it, because they don't tell us that they heard from their neighbor, who got it from her cousin, who's college roommate's boyfriend is a police officer... Sometimes things are as fair as can be, and just don't seem to be.