Fifty years later, we can still take lessons from march on SelmaDate: 3/12/2015 On the weekend during which many people in this country observed even fleetingly the 50th anniversary of the march for voter rights that originated in Selma, AL, a video emerged from a fraternity at Oklahoma University that showed college students participating with smiles on their faces a racist chant.
Put these two news stories together and one gets a sobering bookending of the status of race in this country.
It was regrettable enough that no Republican candidate for president or any member of Congress decided to go to Selma to show their respect. Former President George H. Bush, who reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006, attended, but none of the current leadership of his party apparently saw fit to go. The Republican governor of Alabama was also there, but one would assume he would be.
In this time when continued incidents underscore the ongoing issues of race and violence in this country, isn’t it about time for officials from both parties to make this an issue? Isn’t the eradication of racism something that can be non-partisan? Can’t it be above the present level of political conversation?
President Obama said at the anniversary event, “Of course, a more common mistake is to suggest that racism is banished, that the work that drew men and women to Selma is complete, and that whatever racial tensions remain are a consequence of those seeking to play the ‘race card’ for their own purposes. We don’t need the Ferguson report to know that’s not true. We just need to open our eyes, and ears, and hearts, to know that this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us. We know the march is not yet over, the race is not yet won, and that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character – requires admitting as much.”
“‘We are capable of bearing a great burden,’ James Baldwin wrote, ‘once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.’
“This is work for all Americans, and not just some. Not just whites. Not just blacks. If we want to honor the courage of those who marched that day, then all of us are called to possess their moral imagination. All of us will need to feel, as they did, the fierce urgency of now. All of us need to recognize, as they did, that change depends on our actions, our attitudes, the things we teach our children. And if we make such effort, no matter how hard it may seem, laws can be passed, and consciences can be stirred, and consensus can be built.”
Can we do this? I hope so.
Watching the clock
I don’t know about you, but switching to daylight savings time always messes me up for several weeks as it does to my canine pal Lucky the Wonder Bichon.
Usually Lucky has his limits about staying in bed, but when we start playing with the clock he tends to lose his bearings, as do I. Of course, we both a couple of old men who realize the bed feels its most comfortable minutes before the alarm goes off.
Intellectually I know what the “real” time is and I use that as justification for watching ten minutes more of something on Netflix, but I pay for that indiscretion the next morning when I have to start my day with some level of intelligence and responsibility – oh and consciousness.
There’s a compelling argument on The Atlantic’s website about why we should do away with daylight savings time and it notes most of the world doesn’t observe the system.
I know I wouldn’t mind trying and neither would Lucky.
Agree? Disagree? Drop me a line at news@thereminder.com or at 280 N. Main St., East Longmeadow, MA 01028. As always, this column represents the opinion of its author and not the publishers or advertisers of this newspaper.
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