I Thought the Republicans were the Bad Guys

Lawndale High School -- I took on a six-week assignment at that high school, too.

A slightly more tolerable experience, for the most part because at least I got to teach a subject that I enjoyed immensely -- American Government.

It was a historic time, too, Fall 2010, when the Republicans took back the House after a four-year hiatus, sweeping away the Democratic victories from the 2006 and 2010 victories.

I was so thrilled, I even cut out and waved the USA Today map which outlined the Congressional districts which had changed from Democratic to Republican  hands. I have never seen so much Ruby Red on an electoral map, even more than the predominately red hue from the 2004 Presidential election!

I loved talking about the taut dynamic of liberty and equality, I loved outlining the core differences between Democrats and Republicans.

I also appreciated the warm support that I had received from the students, many of whom sharing with me throughout the six weeks that they hoped that I would stay for the rest of the year -- the original teacher had gone on stress leave.

The seniors needed Government to graduate, simply put. I knew that they would cooperate with me, unlike the majority of juniors at Hawthorne High School, where the culture of disrespect would have strained even the most level-headed of instructors.

I will never forget the day when I outlined the basic differences between the Democratic and Republican parties.

There was one kid --- Tray - who loved to push my buttons, but I thought he was as funny student, all the same. Every time I asked him to do something, he would fire back, "Oh, it's because I'm black."

Yes, he was a black student, but he was also a talkative one. That was the issue, and I never let the race-games catch me off-guard.

He loved to call me "Mr. Shop-Shop" or "Mr. Shop-Boy" -- that I had no problem with, after a short while. Some of the students at Leuzinger also called me "Shop-Shop", so I got used to it pretty fast.

During my six weeks at Lawndale, Tray would cringe in mock-horror every time he saw me ascend the stairs to the second floor to go to class. "No! No!"

He also loved to hide under his hoodie, and he wore Spiderman gloves. I only remember the gloves because one morning, I was going over some of the notes on my cards, when they almost fell out of my hands, but I caught them just before they hit the floor.

"You've got skills like a cat," he told me.

"That's why they call me "Cat Man", I made up on the fly. I was thinking of anthropomorphic names because I saw his Spiderman gloves.


Anyway, I remember the day when I was outlining the basic differences between Democrats and Republicans. I did my best to hide my bias -- although waving the USA Today map all but shot my objectivity in the eyes of the students.

I started out, once again, with the dialectic between liberty and equality, less government and more government, then I came to the issue of taxation.

"Democrats want to raise taxes, for the  most part, especially on the wealthy, while Republicans seek to cut taxes."

"Wait a second," Tray blurted out, "I thought the Republicans were the bad guys. . ."

I have often wondered if Herman Cain's characterization that most black voters have been brainwashed against Republicans had any merit-- perhaps the former Pizza mogul was correct. I often believed that if every voter, no matter what his color, was introduced to the soundness of conservative fiscal and educational policies, the Democratic party would be less inclined to take the black vote for granted.

I remembered Tray in part because of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's stand on controversial issues during the 103rd NAACP convention. In spite of a heavy round of jeering, which lasted all but half a minute, Romney rightly reasoned that ObamaCare was a job-killer which has to be repealed. He stressed the higher unemployment that Blacks are faced with compared to other segments of the population. He also pointed out that disproportionally, black youth are suffering in poorly-run, inadequate public schools which refused to respond to the needs of minority communities, who offer nothing substantial in the way of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

"I  though Republicans were the bad guys. . ." a strange metric, to say the least. Granted, most voters will shy away from a party where they do not find a large number of like-minded, or like-skinned, voters.

Still, I am not in despair -- when I returned to Hawthorne High School toward the end of the year, I was impressed that a number of students in U.S. History courses recognized who said the famous words, "Trust, but verify."

A growing number of youth are not sipping the Obama-Messiah kool-aid, but realize that frequent attacks on free enterprise will imprison them into a stagnant future of no jobs and no future.