I have to admit that I don't really understand what's going on with this prom. When they interviewed the students going in, some of them said that the Black students had been invited or that they (the White students) had invited their Black friends to come, some of them said they would be meeting their black friends afterwards for an "after-prom party", and some of them said, about the "Whites only" prom, "it's a tradition".

About the ones who said that Black students had been invited, I found myself thinking they probably weren't telling the truth or that there was a catch of some kind that would prevent the Black students from attending even if they had been invited. But none of it makes much sense to me anyway. The South is a complicated place, and I'm not from here. Maybe I'll never really understand.

JtS says he saw a lot more overtly racist behavior in Cincinnati when he lived there, than what he sees here in Georgia. I've been thinking I see much more subtle signs of racism, but I found out recently that some of what I've been seeing is the way people in the South behave toward each other generally, regardless of race.

I spent over a decade living in a county in Maryland that was so racist, there just weren't any Blacks living there at all, and very few people belonging to other minorities. If they moved into the county, the local people just made them so miserable, they moved right back out again. So all of the proms in that county were "Whites only".

I think that racism is probably as alive and well here in Georgia as most other parts of the US. Whether or not racism is a bigger problem here than other parts of the country, I honestly can't say.