Civil Rights - 4 Decades
RedbeardI watched In The Heat of the Night yesterday evening. Great film, with masterful performances by Poitier and Steiger.
But one thing struck me. The film is dated. Very dated. And the reason for that is the thing that prompted me to write this entry. The reason the film is so dated is not the car models, the filmstock, the music, or anything like that. It's dated because the civil rights movement has progressed so far in the 4 decades since the film was made.
Just during my adult lifetime, we have progressed from a society with "colored" drinking fountains and "whites only" restaurants to a point where a black man is his party's nominee for the highest office in the land.
We have gone from a society where national guardsmen were needed so kids could just go to school to a point where schools include black teachers and administrators at the highest levels.
We have left behind the society in which blacks were frozen out of success to the point at which today there are over a million businesses owned by blacks.
Statutory racism is dead and buried. The hearts and minds aspect of racism still can be found, but there is no denying that it is terminally ill.
Two of my own young cousins are of mixed race, yet both are confident of success without restrictions. One is at the top of her class, aiming at a career as a doctor. The other has his sights set on entrepreneurship. The sky is the limit for them.
I doubt that most people 40 or more years ago could have foreseen the scope of the progress.
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Reader Comments (4)
We have, indeed, progressed - and that more rapidly than have most cultures. When all is said and done, it may be that aspect of our country's people--more so than military might or economic power--that speaks best of America.
Well said, Red.
I have had a few moments of clarity on how far things have come on race issues.
One example: I attended a lecture by 4 of those brave guys who were the Tuskegee Airmen, one pilot commented on the hotel he was staying at. That hotel provided free rooms to the Airmen for the lecture event, but would not allow blacks to walk into the lobby or stay in the rooms when he got back from World War II.
How dare you even speak of civil rights, Red? Don't you know that, as a Republican, you are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for everything bad that has ever happened to any minority, EVER???