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Give us some credit for America's racial enlightenment
Published in the Boulder Daily Camera, 6/1/2014
In a commencement speech a few weeks ago, Eric Holder, the United States Attorney General, stated his belief that bigotry in America is a "troubling reality behind the headlines." Some of the fuel for his comments came from recent racist remarks made by the likes of sport team owners and scofflaw ranchers who deserved every bit of the scorn they received for their offensive behavior. However, when the Attorney General of the United States holds up these characters to make the point that bigotry is still pervasive in American culture, he takes a few steps too far. Many of us have spent a lifetime fighting bigotry and celebrating diversity in America, and we deserve more credit than he gives us for the progress we've made.
The America that Baby Boomers were born into was a different world. Our nation had been struggling with racism from its beginning. While slavery was certainly the headliner, America had spent most of our first 200 years being content with forced separation of the races — from where people lived to whom they married. "All men are created equal" was still an evolving concept well into the 20th century.
Sometime around then, though, things started changing fast. The agents of change were many. Most notably was a sustained and principled revolt of the oppressed — from Rosa Parks to Malcolm X. They were mad as hell and they weren't going to take it any more.
However, even a just revolt of the oppressed, especially those in a powerless minority, can only succeed with help, and help we did. Only those of us who lived through the civil rights revolution of the 1960s can appreciate how dramatically our national conscience changed in just a few short years. As a Baby Boomer, I'd like to think it was My Generation's demands for tolerance that led to those changes, but that would be unfair. America had been changing for decades and, while we Boomers may have been a catalyst for societal changes in racial equality and tolerance, the whole of America was ripe for the moment.
In the 1960s, our laws and attitudes shifted in ways that were unimaginable only a few years earlier. We decided "separate but equal" schools were nonsense and integrated education. We made it illegal to discriminate in the workplace based upon race, amongst other things that shouldn't matter if you can do your job. We integrated societal institutions at all corners, from the military to restaurants to professional sports.
But, integration and tolerance weren't enough. We decided we needed to atone for our sins and, rather than wait for equal opportunities to create a more socially and economically equal society, we invented affirmative action to speed things up. The advantages in opportunity we offered to racially disadvantaged Americans stood unimpeded for almost half a century and many are still in place.
How have we done? In the end, racial integration takes place at the individual level — person to person — so maybe the ultimate measure of racial integration is interracial marriage. Between 1970 and 2010, the percentage of interracial marriages in America rose from 2.1 percent to 15.1 percent. Another way of understanding this is that, in 1960, interracial marriage was very unusual and more than a little scary. Today it's no big deal.
At an equally intimate level are transracial adoptions — something almost unheard of in 1960. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that, by 2007, 40 percent of all adopted American children lived in transracial families. Wow.
At a societal level, we elected a black president and then re-elected him four years later. Enough said.
Of course, we all have seeds of bigotry within us that evolved from our early ancestors who learned that people from outside their "tribe" often presented danger. In today's flat and vibrant world, that makes no sense, but we will forever be fighting our inborn bias against people who are different from us — a battle that can only be won within our souls. We must all pledge to never stop fighting that battle.
To be sure, there are still many signs that all is not perfect, like higher incarceration rates for minorities and differences in education and socioeconomic status. Some issues require continued action and some will just take time.
But, maybe it's also time to celebrate our successes over the past 250 years and not dwell on our failures nor look for signs of bigotry at every turn. Americans are better than Mr. Holder seems to think, I just know it.
In a commencement speech a few weeks ago, Eric Holder, the United States Attorney General, stated his belief that bigotry in America is a "troubling reality behind the headlines." Some of the fuel for his comments came from recent racist remarks made by the likes of sport team owners and scofflaw ranchers who deserved every bit of the scorn they received for their offensive behavior. However, when the Attorney General of the United States holds up these characters to make the point that bigotry is still pervasive in American culture, he takes a few steps too far. Many of us have spent a lifetime fighting bigotry and celebrating diversity in America, and we deserve more credit than he gives us for the progress we've made.
The America that Baby Boomers were born into was a different world. Our nation had been struggling with racism from its beginning. While slavery was certainly the headliner, America had spent most of our first 200 years being content with forced separation of the races — from where people lived to whom they married. "All men are created equal" was still an evolving concept well into the 20th century.
Sometime around then, though, things started changing fast. The agents of change were many. Most notably was a sustained and principled revolt of the oppressed — from Rosa Parks to Malcolm X. They were mad as hell and they weren't going to take it any more.
However, even a just revolt of the oppressed, especially those in a powerless minority, can only succeed with help, and help we did. Only those of us who lived through the civil rights revolution of the 1960s can appreciate how dramatically our national conscience changed in just a few short years. As a Baby Boomer, I'd like to think it was My Generation's demands for tolerance that led to those changes, but that would be unfair. America had been changing for decades and, while we Boomers may have been a catalyst for societal changes in racial equality and tolerance, the whole of America was ripe for the moment.
In the 1960s, our laws and attitudes shifted in ways that were unimaginable only a few years earlier. We decided "separate but equal" schools were nonsense and integrated education. We made it illegal to discriminate in the workplace based upon race, amongst other things that shouldn't matter if you can do your job. We integrated societal institutions at all corners, from the military to restaurants to professional sports.
But, integration and tolerance weren't enough. We decided we needed to atone for our sins and, rather than wait for equal opportunities to create a more socially and economically equal society, we invented affirmative action to speed things up. The advantages in opportunity we offered to racially disadvantaged Americans stood unimpeded for almost half a century and many are still in place.
How have we done? In the end, racial integration takes place at the individual level — person to person — so maybe the ultimate measure of racial integration is interracial marriage. Between 1970 and 2010, the percentage of interracial marriages in America rose from 2.1 percent to 15.1 percent. Another way of understanding this is that, in 1960, interracial marriage was very unusual and more than a little scary. Today it's no big deal.
At an equally intimate level are transracial adoptions — something almost unheard of in 1960. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that, by 2007, 40 percent of all adopted American children lived in transracial families. Wow.
At a societal level, we elected a black president and then re-elected him four years later. Enough said.
Of course, we all have seeds of bigotry within us that evolved from our early ancestors who learned that people from outside their "tribe" often presented danger. In today's flat and vibrant world, that makes no sense, but we will forever be fighting our inborn bias against people who are different from us — a battle that can only be won within our souls. We must all pledge to never stop fighting that battle.
To be sure, there are still many signs that all is not perfect, like higher incarceration rates for minorities and differences in education and socioeconomic status. Some issues require continued action and some will just take time.
But, maybe it's also time to celebrate our successes over the past 250 years and not dwell on our failures nor look for signs of bigotry at every turn. Americans are better than Mr. Holder seems to think, I just know it.
