In a recent article, Yale professor David Gelernter noted that modern America had “two extraordinary accomplishments: victory in the Cold War and the all-but-eradication of race prejudice in a single generation . . . ” The back story of the latter is worth pondering around Independence Day.
When I was growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, everything and everyone around me was segregated. Five years before I was born, local idiots vociferously insulted Jackie Robinson when he came to town with the Montreal Royals, prior to his debut in Brooklyn. Twenty-odd years later, the man for whom I occasionally served Mass, Cardinal Lawrence Shehan, was shouted down at a Baltimore City Council meeting when he testified in favor of an open housing bill. Until my latter high school years, the n-word was heard in polite circles, even among people who would never deliberately harm someone they so designated. That ingrained patterns of prejudice changed dramatically within a generation is indeed an extraordinary accomplishment.
And it was a moral accomplishment—a moral revolution. The civil rights movement in its classic period was predominantly a Christian movement; its appeals to American traditions of equality and fairness were regularly buttressed by appeals to biblical ideas of justice. The legal movement to end segregation may have been led by lawyers, but the movement in the streets was led by black Baptist ministers and other clergy, and their presence helped give the classic civil rights movement the character of a revival.
Now it is certainly true that, in the period immediately following the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, legal change accelerated cultural change. But a critical mass of moral passion was essential to getting that legal change through Congress. And that moral passion was most often rooted in Christian conviction. The classic civil rights movement called America to a reckoning with the truths its Declaration of Independence deemed self-evident; it also called America to a reckoning with its God.
The United States today is no paradise of racial comity, and the bitter residues of segregation can be found among both blacks and whites in 2011. That truth notwithstanding, America is also the most racially egalitarian society in human history. Most Americans don’t recognize this because Americans, being the cultural children of Calvinism, are very good at self-flagellation. Compare the United States today with Europe and Latin America, however.
It is impossible to imagine an Afro-Bavarian (or Afro-Saxon, or Afro-Prussian) chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, just as it is impossible to imagine an Afro-Italian prime minister of Italy or an Afro-French president of France. Brazil advertises its racial tolerance but no Afro-Brazilian president is likely anytime soon. One of the reasons why the heroic Dr. Oscar Biscet was kept in a communist dungeon in Cuba for years is that Biscet is Afro-Cuban, and the pale-faced inheritors of the Castro brothers’ failed revolution are major-league racists. The reason there will almost certainly not be an African pope in the next twenty years is not American racism, but concerns about a black man in white among European and Latin American papal electors.
The remarkable racial egalitarianism of the contemporary United States not only stands in sharp contrast to the country’s history of racial prejudice; it tells us something important about the future, and specifically about the future of the pro-life movement, which is the natural heir to the classic civil rights movement. And what it tells us is that, within living memory, America was moved to undertake massive cultural and legal change on the basis of religiously grounded appeals to moral truth.
Yes, the America of the Montgomery bus boycott and the freedom riders and the Letter from Birmingham Jail and the Edmund Pettis Bridge is a different America than the America of the Kardashians, MTV, Bernie Madoff, and “gay marriage.” But America still asks, in song, “may God thy gold refine.” And while it does, there is real hope for reincorporating everyone, born and unborn, into the community of common protection and concern.
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
RESOURCES
James Nuechterlein, Race Matters
Elizabeth Scalia, The Toxic Card of Racism Trumps Hearts
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Comments:
But you also have to understand that it was a time when, if you controlled the opinions of the three television networks, you pretty much had a megaphone that no one could argue effectively against. That is not the case now and it is doubtful that any such laws could be passed in the age of the internet.
That, in my opinion, is the end of racism in the United States.
Even to the most insular, conservative, Christianist viewpoint, it is hard to imagine giving credence to the notion that racial prejudice is "all but eradicated". Look around, man!
> "So how does this, then, compare to the gay rights movement?"
You tell me. Because I can see no similarity except in the surface.
> why don't we give it the same support.
Because the "gay rights" are not real human rights. There is no right to
1) censor speech that disapproves of sodomy
2) mandate adoption of children by men who have sex with men
3) redefine marriage and force everyone to accept
"gay rights" are nowhere in the Bible, the Constitution, or natural law. In fact,
some of those "rights" explicitly contradict the Constitution.
Read http://frexpression.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/a-gay-man-decries-gay-rights/
One more discourse strategy to ground profound human complexity of sexuality and relationship psychology into something stupid and minimal (“sexual orientation”). Within this concept there is the implicit dogma that homosexuality is determined by genes, much like the pigment of one's skin. Another false claim, but which does wonders to make people accept anything homosexualits say.
I also find interesting to see that homosexualists only use this “sexual orientation” label for homosexual attraction. I never hear people saying the so-and-so has a feet sexual orientation or a dog sexual orientation, or any type of desire or attraction.
I would venture to say that public opinion has drastically changed in the last 50 years. I don't even think that point is debatable.
However, in terms of 'how far we've come', there are many places in this country where things like biracial dating are just as foreign to some now, as they were in 1960.
The sanctimonious tone notwithstanding, your objections to the article are underwhelming.
Being against illegal immigration is not the same thing as racism.
Neither is expressing concern about certain aspects of Islam. Unless, of course, you are implying that being of a certain race and a certain religion necessarily go together.
And "Christianist" is a silly word.
It seems to me you failed to really comprehend the article.
@ Mr. Hackman, Racial profiling has been statistically recorded and collection of records on profiling has been legislated in several states. Racial discrimination is still a reality in the U.S. Take a look at current state of the indian reservations. Aren't they supposed to be the native americans?
@ Ms. Klein, the gay people aren't considered a race yet. Races have national and ethnic cultures as part of their identity.
"
Basis for this serious allegation on the integrity of papal electors?
My point still stands. Being concerned with illegal immigration is not the same thing as racism, nor is being concerned about certain aspects of Islam, which is what Mr. Lee's comments imply.
What did Chief Sitting Bull or the sioux nation and other tribes call it when the "whites" flooded their country?
Contrary to the "anti-immigration-doesn't-mean-I-hate-Mexicans" meme, there is an undeniable undercurrent of racism that surrounds the immigration issue. Same with the xenophobia around Muslim immigrants. I'm white, my wife is second generation Mexican-American. The difference in how we are treated by shopkeepers, customer service reps, etc., is stark.
I re-read my original post in view of your response, and I stand by my remarks. The United States remains remarkably unenlightened on matters of racial equality and civil rights, not just for blacks, but for all people of color who continue to struggle for what's fair and right.
I find the use of the word "paranoid" when discussing 9-11 by so many in our culture interesting. Paranoid: a thought process heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, to the point of irrationality and delusion.
Since over 3.000 people were murdered on 9-11, and all those who planned and performed this attack were Muslim, I don't believe that a serious concern about radical Islam in the present day is "paranoid."
Should we be more positively discriminating in our view of individual Muslims? Of course. But . . . and I cannot cite the specific poll . . . shortly after 9-11, a poll was done in major Islamic countries and approximately 50% of those polled had a positive opinion of Osama bin Laden. Extrapolating scientific polling results, 50% of 1.4 billion people is a very large number. Even if the number is only 10%, that still represents 140,000,000 people. To be vigilant and concerned after 9-11 about the threat of radical Islam is not paranoid, it is prudent. But we must act prudently toward all in our response.
Also with your orientation thoughts, you make another interesting comment. Although it sounds not politically correct, perhaps a better phrase would be homosexual disorientation or homosexual orientation disorder. It seems putting the word "orientation" without the qualification of disorder puts it into the genetics understanding. Any thoughts? These are just my thoughts here, still working on it.
R.R. Reno just put out a plea for donations to help support First Things. I think it is a worthy cause to support, but it seems unfortunate that he cast FT's mission as an effort to throw more shovelfuls of dirt on the putrid corpse of liberalism. (Excuse me for borrowing Mussolini's phrase about "burying the putrid corpse of democracy.") If liberalism, in all its aspects, is so pathetically worthless, what can we do with its central role in the Civil Rights revolution that Mr. Weigal so eloquently celebrates here?
I'm not sure if that's true. There's actually a lot of xenophobia in other countries. Look at Iceland or the recent videos that have surfaced from England. Although the United States isn't perfect, we are actually pretty fair in comparison to other countries.
