What sadly amounts to a Hobbit's handful of student activist were able to mobilize and motivate another midget's mittsful of the overall student body - a couple of thousand, 2510 - to vote to move on, out of 1955, into the 21st century and choose a new representative of Ole Miss.

850 voted to hang onto the lovable Ol' Colonel Reb, the caricature of a white plantation owner the university dropped as their mascot seven years ago.

But what seems most striking is the apathy of the vast majority of the students about this issue. Of the roughly 18,000 students eligible to vote in the online election Tuesday, less than 20 percent did.

I'm going to go out on a limb, venture to suggest . . . the vast overwhelming majority of Afro-Americans students participated, and the vast overwhelming majority of . . . Euro-American students did not cast an vote. There was undeniably, on their Caucassian behalves - an  absence of emotion, very little enthusiasm.

With that said, apathy sadly won.

As a black parent, and I am one, my boy, Elroy is in his 4th year of college - somebody enlighten me; why would I send my beloved son or daughter to Ole Miss, understanding most of the student body wasn't even interested in righting an historical wrong?

Am I to actually believe  they've all moved beyond color . . . . Please!

Here, take me even further; why in the hell should my student/athlete child perform for Ole Miss? Why assist, contribute-to, increase their profit stream by . . . running up n' down a court or field, while they're folks in the stands screaming " the south will rise again" and the devil only knows what else?

Why not have my kid attend a school where at least the rednecks don't feel comfortable enough to flaunt the symbols of the slave-holding Confederacy?

Evidently most Ole Miss academicians  could care less about confronting and resisting racism.

Sure, I could look at this quagmire from the popular Mary Poppin's  perspective; there's only about a thousand card carrying Junior Klansman enrolled on the campus, most of those who didn't vote just don't see race as being relevant in this new century.

But, forgive me for throwing  the Ace of Spades out  across the table . . . . what's more worrysome to me; there's thousands and thousands and thousands of kids at Ole Miss. . . who simply don't give a damn.

And spare me; these will be the ones who talk about not seeing color . . . in a nation about two or three checker-board moves away from tanks in the street. Let another James Earl Ray or Lee Harvey type figure surface . . . let Obama be the target. we're one O.J. or a Rodney King police beating away from pandemonium.

It's no secret guys on the Right are locked n' cocked - talking about coon season os around the corner. Bolivia is wonderful in the fall.

Please note; these Cotton league colligiat types are future  small "a" aristocrats; bosses, managers, middle and upper class white collar white folks . . . who don't even deem a slave owner as their alma mater's mascot anything they cared enough about to log-on and vote against. 

Who can argue - they're disconnected from history, ignorant of the subject matter's horrific past, or merely above it all; completely disinterested - one  I believe as rooted in disgusting arrogance.

But hang on, am I wrong to regard this group - college white kids, as lacking intellectual curiosity and courage? Or, are they already displaying their parents Republican/Tea Party philosophy of; I'm not my brother's Keeper!

We are not in this all-together, and it's surly not all for one n' one for all . . . get your own open heart surgery. . . don't ask me for a red nickel you bum! Everyman, women and child for themselves?

Nonetheless,  to be uninterested an issue that resonates throughout the land;  a rather diabolical figure, a slave owner  as your college mascot? 

The, what I logically thought had to be the SOB, who split familes up, ordered the beatings of slaves, raped slave women?

The cat who, when the slave ran away, the slave's preganant women might be dragged-out in front of the slave quarters, tied to a tree, her belly protruding out, and the slave owner would give the order for one of his men to . . . split her stomach open, killing her,  her unborn child tumbles to the dirt, and is squashed, stomped-on, murderd (according to Tim Tebow and his disciples)  by the master . . . this horrific act - to send a direct n' deliberate message to the negras, boy! you'd better think twice, three times before you head for them Smokey Mountains.

To be oblivious to the lack-of humanity in these tough-love Kodak moments . . . explains the popularity of Glen Beck and the boys today in America.

I keep forgetting in Disney's Song of the South, us Black folks loved being slaves - that's how the conservative establishment would rather have the tall tale told; 

My great grand folks were better off in chains than i deepest darkest Africa chasing their dinner, and their dinner chasing them.

Please, As my aunt Ophelia would say . . .  "when you have invasive envoulantary sexual intercourse with me, anally at that  . . . please kiss me."

Let me understand this; it's irrelevent, meaningless - if a plantation pimp stands as a symbol of your college? If that's so, and appearently it is - it  speaks volumns about how a nation could go a hundred years with people being treated as sub-humans.

I guess I've no further to look then the Ole Miss campus of today to understand what kind of White man or women of 1963 could sit idly-by and watch people erect No Coloreds signs, or sit silently as  old women were made to give up her sit on a bus for a young man.

Gee-whiz, these "intellectuals of tomorrow" might too be able to sit and say not a damn thing as hanging nooses were slung over tree limbs like a number of their grand parents must have.

Book knowledge and character are two very different things.

It should matter, deeply to these seekers of the light at Ole Miss - if a man with the barbaric credentials of a plantation owner is the poster good-ole-boy for your institution of higher learning.

But, by all indications . . . for a couple thousand it matters, and a few thousand  it don't mean nothing. I'll take the youthful 850 kub-klansmen . . . at least I know who's my enemy . . . and whose my occasional, depending on the occasion fair-weather friend.