Fair or unfair?

This morning, I heard something on the radio that has been bothering me all morning.  It began as the news that some counties in Georgia have decided to have school on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (this coming Monday) because students have now missed an entire week of school due to snow and ice.  The choices are really to take away this holiday, some of spring break, Memorial Day, or tack days onto the end of the year during the summer.

Because I have some school system experience, I can see how this makes the most sense (to have school on MLK Jr. Day) - lots of people plan trips for Spring Break, Memorial Day, and summer break, and some can't be refunded, so if they had school then, they'd get enormous backlash from parents and students.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was a very important individual in our history, but it's freezing on MLK Jr. Day and because it's only one day during winter, very few people travel for it.  What's more, people who have the day off generally stay home and don't do much of anything but relax, and a lot of the companies in Atlanta don't even consider the day a holiday.

Nonetheless, there were people calling in saying these school systems are racist.  No kidding.  They were saying that Martin Luther King was far too important to just "skip" his day.  So the radio hosts asked some of the callers if they'd be happier if the schools made a point of doing special presentations and readings that day about the man, to which they responded no, that wasn't good enough.  But when asked what special commemorative events they had planned for the day, none of the callers had a single thing to mention!  ?!?!?!?!?!

I was also highly frustrated when the radio hosts asked if it would be preferable for those callers if President's Day was canceled, and they said yes, "because white men have been celebrated enough."  Are you joking?

I absolutely love people of all races and really believe in equality.  I personally don't care if they hold school on MLK Day AND President's Day - both could be better handled for kids while they're in school anyway, as opposed to sitting at home watching daytime television and playing video games.  It was just so apparent from these radio callers that they WANTED to feel like "white people" were being unfair to "black people" about MLK Day.  Heaven forbid we should educate our kids as much as possible, why shouldn't they be in school for it?  Frustrating.