Post-racial Musings

Had Hillary Clinton been elected president and someone filed a lawsuit to nullify or seriously restrict Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 alleging that the egregious sexual discrimination that inspired those laws is almost non-existent today, he would have been considered naïve or mean-spirited.  Similarly, when Madeleine Albright became the first female U. S. Secretary of State in 1997, had someone declared the State Department a “post-sexual” environment, he, too, would have been deemed cruelly out of touch with reality.

If these musings are sane, I wonder if it is fair to compare Title IX to the 1965 Voting Rights Act that assured the right to vote to millions of African Americans long denied it through brutal intimidation and unconstitutional subterfuge.  Incidentally, the Voting Rights Act is before the U. S. Supreme Court for possible restrictions or nullification.  Those who filed the suit(s) assert that the “racial progress” the South and other affected states have made since the Selma, Alabama crisis render enforcement of those laws unnecessary or unfair.

I would also ask those who have declared the United States a “post-racial” society because of the election of President Barack Obama, to compare our country with the "post-sexual" State Department after Madeleine Albright was appointed in 1997.

The purpose of these musings is to kindle thoughtful comparison, not to vex anyone … 🙂

David Evans

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John Hope Franklin, RIP

The renowned historian, John Hope Franklin (Harvard Ph.D. 1941), died today (3/25/09) of congestive heart failure at Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina.  He was ninety-four years old and left a legacy of scholarship and advocacy for civil and human rights that combined the erudition and audacity of two of his heroes:  W. E. B. DuBois and Frederick Douglass.

Having lived through the notorious 1921 Tulsa Race Riot in his native Oklahoma and also long enough to witness Barack Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States, John Hope Franklin was more than a scholar of history, he WAS history.

He was one of those rare human beings where the “Why of his death?” is so diminished by the “What of his life?” that we never associated him with an “end.”  Somehow we thought that John Hope Franklin would go on forever.  Maybe we were confusing his humanity and prodigious scholarship with his mortality.  Such is understandable (and maybe not far off) to those who followed his extraordinary life.

Psalms 90:10 states that “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years…”

Well, John Hope Franklin was blessed with FOURSCORE AND FOURTEEN years!!

Need I say  more?

David Evans

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