I don't know if other bloggers do this, but I suspect they do. I often back-date entries, i.e., writing Wednesday's blog entry on Thursday, Sunday's on Monday, etc. That's what I'm doing now. Typing at 1:35 a.m. on Sunday morning and posting to yesterday. (Of course, I would not have this problem at all if I weren't so anal about trying to maintain one daily blogging entry. I'm not like my friend Montag over at "
A Father Talks to His Daughter about God." I mean that guy is prolific, sometimes half a dozen entries a day, always at least two or three. And sometimes he so erudite and deep I cannot really follow what he means. But it's all good. I like the way his mind works.) Anyway as I was saying, I read in the
Writer's Almanac that tomorrow is the 54th anniversary of the day that President Eisenhower sent over a thousand federal troops to
Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, to ensure the safety of nine black students who were the first to integrate the school. Like all the southern states, Arkansas had dragged its feet about implementing the order of the
Supreme Court in 1954's epochal
Brown decision. And in the case of Arkansas, the governor had used the state national guard to essentially prevent the blacks from attending the school. You can read all about the story
here.
The point of the story is to tell how embarrassed I am now at what I was then, just another southern white guy who uncritically accepted the racism of everything and everybody around me, including my family and relatives, friends, the whole white culture in the South, as normal. It's a great embarrassment to me that won't, I fear, ever be subsiding. I was part of that whole culture of hate. My conversion, my sanity, came too late to eradicate what had gone before.
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| This is what it took in 1957 to get into your school . . . if you were a black person. |
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| Hate--an iconic image of the time. |
5 comments:
Ditto your embarrassment. Best thing I ever did was move away from that culture.
Thank you for the praise.
I usually think of myself as being scatter- brained, so it is an enormous relief to hear things like that... after months and months of being in the midst of folks who do NOT like the way my mind works.
I admire your post on racism being the background music of the film of our youth, and thus being imperceptible to us.
It should remind us that the 60's were a very good time: the attacks on institutional racism, the agreement to not nuke ourselves back to the stone age, to name but two achievements.
The times of making a stand on principles are not behind us. Your memory of the 60's will reinforce our determination to stand up for what is good and honorable in the coming days and years.
Mare, unfortunately there are some in our family, whom, I fear, are not too far advanced from the culture we've left behind.
Montag, you may be scatter-brained but what scattered around is a myriad of fascinating observations and intriguing connections between a cultured perspective and the realities of the world around us.
I wish I could believe fully that stands on principles are not a thing of the past. Alas, I think the crass realities of economic distress and increasing shortages of necessities (not the least of which, petroleum) are going to push humane principles way down the list of priorities.
I sincerely hope I'm wrong. But what we see now are so-called "principles," such as preserving freedom, fostering democracy, etc., being put in the service of a corrupt and rapacious corporate oligarchy.
They are not a thing of the past because men and women of principle have disappeared... there are many such individuals, but honor, principle, and loyalty are as yet still private virtues.
We are not yet called to a public forum and made to bear witness to principle.
The chance for a stand on principle is very high because our government is finding it difficult to perform simple tasks.
Simple matters such as funding government agencies require people of the caliber of Henry Clay for compromise.
The outcome of this will give us unrest and discord... and plenty of chance to stand on principles, just as the generations immediately following Clay discovered.
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