For a long, long time, I thought of my parents as hard-working, honest, thoughtful, kind people who cared not just about the welfare of their family, but for other families, too. Consistent with both their faith and character, they loved their neighbor and were their brother’s keeper.

These qualities did not especially set them apart in their town. It’s the way folks were back then.

But in every life, there comes a time when a person is confronted with an unpleasant truth and must accept that all is not what he once believed it to be.

So, I would like to thank the Mississippi Republican Party and our Republican-dominated legislature for exposing my parents for what they really were — chumps and dummies.

It seems laughable now, but as young parents my folks proudly supported the local public schools, attending as often as possible countless school events, from ballgames to band concerts. They bought candy bars and cookies to support school clubs. They attended PTA and school board meetings. They were there at open houses, meet the teacher nights and graduation ceremonies.

They were not afraid that having their kids attend school alongside Black children would corrupt them or that the presence of Black students made the school somehow inferior. My parents were unskilled and uneducated beyond high school, which meant they worked alongside Black folks who – and this is going to be hard to believe – had the same hopes, desires, dreams and fears for their children as they did for their own kids.

Private schools weren’t an option because there were no private schools in town and still wouldn’t be 20 years after Mississippi public schools were finally forced to integrate.

Rich or poor, Black or white, they were all in this thing together and did their part to the best of their abilities. The schools were a rallying point for the entire community because it was the one thing the entire community had in common.

How dumb can you be?

Sixty years ago, my parents resisted the chorus of “ School Choice” because, despite being chumps, they recognized the ugly ulterior motives behind those words and the potential negative impact those words could have on their local schools and, by extension, their community.

I oppose today’s iteration of “School Choice” as my parents did in their day…and for the same reasons. Those haven’t changed when you peel the onion.

My parents, being simpletons, believed that their community could not flourish if the public schools were allowed to fail. They were not alone in this belief. Making sure their public schools succeeded was a part of the town’s ethos. In that unenlightened time, parents didn’t choose to run away when things got tough. They chose to stick together to fix what was broken. Taking their children out of their public school was considered a betrayal of a civic duty. So they chose, without hesitation, to support their public schools. It was the only kind of “school choice” they believed in.

How dumb is that?

Today, we know that it is every parent, every child, for himself. We know that citizens have no obligation to their local schools.

We understand that it’s only natural that the schools who face the greatest challenges, have the least resources and those that have the least access to political power be left to founder as the result of an exodus of students to more affluent, better funded and better connected schools. How else can the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? If we are going to maintain a society built on class, that’s the way it must be.

The select few are more important than the irrelevant masses. That much is reflected in all the “school choice” bills the legislature is considering this session. They are all designed to serve the few at the expense of the many.

That’s just the way it should be.

It’s crazy that my parents didn’t believe any of that.

It pains me to think how dumb they were.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].