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This shouldn’t be the story. The fact that this was a story should be the story.

Today’s Open Mic car­ries a sin­gle story of the week. Last week­end, Wilcox County High School in Geor­gia held its first racially inte­grated prom. Nearly a half-​​century after the pas­sage of the Civil Rights Act. Sure, all of those seg­re­gated proms were legal, sim­ply because the school refused to hold one since the Act was passed…and left it to “pri­vate enti­ties” to hold “pri­vate par­ties” that just hap­pened to look exactly like high school proms. There are so many metas­to­ries here. Why is this dog-​​bites-​​man story a story? Is it because the dog finally bit back, after a half-​​century of the man bit­ing the dog? Is that why we didn’t see any­thing in the press about the 2012 “pri­vate par­ties”, which were merely seg­re­gated proms? What was wrong with the 2012 class’s stu­dents? Or 2011’s? Or 2010’s? We had a bira­cial Pres­i­dent, but bira­cial stu­dents couldn’t attend the “white pri­vate party”…in 2012!

In related news, in Birm­ing­ham, Alabama, A. H. Parker High School’s class of 1963 held its prom this week. Only 50 years late. You see, the prom was can­celed in 1963 after stu­dents protested seg­re­ga­tion. And the stu­dents are still wait­ing for their grad­u­a­tion ceremony.

Of course, it’s Fri­day, so you get to decide what to dis­cuss. But this is at least food for thought.

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.

Sonic Boom: the explo­sion at the fer­til­izer plant in West, Texas.

The week started off with a dis­as­ter in Boston, as some­one exploded a pair of bombs at the fin­ish line of the Boston Marathon. Wednes­day night, there was a dis­as­ter in Texas as a fer­til­izer plant exploded, killing at least fif­teen peo­ple. The Sen­ate had its own dis­as­ter, as a minor­ity of Sen­a­tors fil­i­bus­tered a bill with pro­vi­sions sup­ported by nine out of ten Amer­i­cans. Harry Reid promised to come back to it — the fight is not over. Dis­as­ters were averted when two let­ters con­tain­ing the deadly poi­son ricin were dis­cov­ered, one addressed to a Sen­a­tor, he other to the Pres­i­dent. A sus­pect is in cus­tody. Another sus­pect is in cus­tody — a mar­ried cou­ple, actu­ally — in a dis­as­ter that hap­pened, the mur­der of a pair of Texas pros­e­cu­tors (and the wife of one of them). The dis­as­ter that was America’s response to the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks had more light shed upon it, as a bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion con­cluded that the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion tor­tured many of the peo­ple it ille­gally detained. In what might be an inter­est­ing twist on the ori­gin of the word “dis­as­ter” — a “bad star” — NASA announced dis­cov­ery of two or three plan­ets that might har­bor life, thus per­haps orbit­ing good stars.

But we don’t have to talk about dis­as­ters. It’s Fri­day, and that means the floor is yours. What do you want to discuss?

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.