James O. Chatham: The Young Will Lead The Way.
The young will lead the way
By James O. Chatham
"Is it possible yet?" I ask myself.
I remember vividly what we white Americans believed in the 1940s and '50s regarding "Negroes." The catalogue was demeaning, both for them and for us. Thomas Jefferson, 150 years earlier, had laid it all out in his Notes on the State of Virginia, and his perceptions were still the ruling norm during my childhood: that black people were intellectually, morally, psychologically, and socially inferior to white people. Not everyone in my growing-up years believed that, but, South and North, it was the reigning image.
Then came the momentous Civil Rights Act of 1964, championed, ironically, by a confirmed Southerner, President Lyndon B. Johnson, the 20th Century's master of political manipulation, who pushed the act through Congress over the vehement objections of some of his best friends. The voices against it were loud! Their major theme was, "You can't legislate morality!" You can't bring about by law changes that have to happen in people's hearts. It was a thin veil over deeply entrenched prejudice, the real motive behind the opposition.
The Civil Rights Act legislated lots of morality. It put black people and white people on the same buses, in the same swimming pools, in the same classrooms, in the same restaurants, at the same jobs, in the same political offices, in the same residential neighborhoods, and on the same judicial benches. Regardless of whether we were "ready," the act created a new reality across this country where, as someone said, "We learned to love and hate one another in person." The Civil Rights Act gathered us all into one boat and told us to learn to live together.
The outcome, over the next 44 years, has been two generations of Americans for whom race is no big deal. All those raw, filthy prejudices that used to imprison people like me are now disregarded by numbers of younger Americans. They are giving us, their elders, the gift of a fresh outlook. They have grown up realizing that black people are just as good and just as bad as whites, just as intelligent and just as dumb as whites, just as morally honorable and just as retrograde as whites, just as loving and just as hate-obsessed as whites. And that a highly intelligent young man of partially African-American descent with a spectacular record from Harvard, a promising political career, and two feet firmly planted in the plight of struggling people deserves as much chance at the presidency as any of the rest of us. It is the gift of late-20th Century youth to their parents: to lead us out of our self-created darkness.
As we have been aware poignantly in recent days, however, there is still plenty of racism left in America. It has been easily aroused by the inflammatory images of an angry, desperate political campaign.
Sen. John McCain is undoubtedly1y honest when he declares that he, personally, is not a racist, but he apparently hasn't been paying attention to what his campaign has been doing. The racist cues (veiled, again, but quite clear) have come in our mail boxes, over our telephones, and on our TV screens. Are we going to imprison ourselves one more time behind the bars of our prejudices? That, in these final days, has become the major question of this campaign.
If Barak Obama loses, it will not be because of McCain's superiority as a leader. It will be because racism still lives deeply in America. Have we really made progress? These next two days will tell.
Jim Chatham is the pastor emeritus of Highland Presbyterian Church.
Editor's comment: The author of this piece has nailed it PERFECTLY.
By James O. Chatham
"Is it possible yet?" I ask myself.
I remember vividly what we white Americans believed in the 1940s and '50s regarding "Negroes." The catalogue was demeaning, both for them and for us. Thomas Jefferson, 150 years earlier, had laid it all out in his Notes on the State of Virginia, and his perceptions were still the ruling norm during my childhood: that black people were intellectually, morally, psychologically, and socially inferior to white people. Not everyone in my growing-up years believed that, but, South and North, it was the reigning image.
Then came the momentous Civil Rights Act of 1964, championed, ironically, by a confirmed Southerner, President Lyndon B. Johnson, the 20th Century's master of political manipulation, who pushed the act through Congress over the vehement objections of some of his best friends. The voices against it were loud! Their major theme was, "You can't legislate morality!" You can't bring about by law changes that have to happen in people's hearts. It was a thin veil over deeply entrenched prejudice, the real motive behind the opposition.
The Civil Rights Act legislated lots of morality. It put black people and white people on the same buses, in the same swimming pools, in the same classrooms, in the same restaurants, at the same jobs, in the same political offices, in the same residential neighborhoods, and on the same judicial benches. Regardless of whether we were "ready," the act created a new reality across this country where, as someone said, "We learned to love and hate one another in person." The Civil Rights Act gathered us all into one boat and told us to learn to live together.
The outcome, over the next 44 years, has been two generations of Americans for whom race is no big deal. All those raw, filthy prejudices that used to imprison people like me are now disregarded by numbers of younger Americans. They are giving us, their elders, the gift of a fresh outlook. They have grown up realizing that black people are just as good and just as bad as whites, just as intelligent and just as dumb as whites, just as morally honorable and just as retrograde as whites, just as loving and just as hate-obsessed as whites. And that a highly intelligent young man of partially African-American descent with a spectacular record from Harvard, a promising political career, and two feet firmly planted in the plight of struggling people deserves as much chance at the presidency as any of the rest of us. It is the gift of late-20th Century youth to their parents: to lead us out of our self-created darkness.
As we have been aware poignantly in recent days, however, there is still plenty of racism left in America. It has been easily aroused by the inflammatory images of an angry, desperate political campaign.
Sen. John McCain is undoubtedly1y honest when he declares that he, personally, is not a racist, but he apparently hasn't been paying attention to what his campaign has been doing. The racist cues (veiled, again, but quite clear) have come in our mail boxes, over our telephones, and on our TV screens. Are we going to imprison ourselves one more time behind the bars of our prejudices? That, in these final days, has become the major question of this campaign.
If Barak Obama loses, it will not be because of McCain's superiority as a leader. It will be because racism still lives deeply in America. Have we really made progress? These next two days will tell.
Jim Chatham is the pastor emeritus of Highland Presbyterian Church.
Editor's comment: The author of this piece has nailed it PERFECTLY.
Labels: General information
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 6:06 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home