Rhymes With Puck Off | While We're at It... | Die, White Liberals, Die | Blood and Guts

Same ol': These racist practices have been the norm for DISD since the first non-white entered the district. In 1976, I was in fourth grade and forced desegregation was put in place, sending black kids from the Fair Park area to my mostly white elementary school (G.W. Truett). Plano was a tiny 'burb until this ill-thought plan took effect, but it spurred white flight to the nth degree. Those of us with parents not willing or able to head north were left to figure out how to adapt as the sudden minority group in our own neighborhood school. Many of the black kids hated the fact that they had to get up an hour early to catch a bus when the elementary school down the street from them sat empty and unused. Fighting and bullying were rampant, and the all-white school administrators had to figure out what to do to stem the violence. Any white kid with half a brain was suddenly introduced into the TAG (Talented and Gifted) program. For four hours a day we were isolated from the general population. I don't remember a single black kid in the program. I do remember resentment by most of the kids not in TAG, regardless of race, and had to adapt to a whole new set of problems and got into more than my share of fights because of the policies that were forced upon everyone. Of course, the white administrators almost always took the side of the smart white kid.

J. Bruce Lamphier

Dallas

Blood and Guts

Cock men: I was stunned to read Jesse Hyde's article, but not because of its shocking portrayal of the cruelty of this "sport" ("Chicken Man," January 18). I was more surprised by the honest comments of those who enjoy the blood and guts—they call it like it is. Take a look in your refrigerator and tell me, are you part of the problem or part of the solution? Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best, "You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."

Mark Peters

Bedford