GEORGE TEMPLETON: COMMENTARY
Image from Storyville.
By George Templeton
Gazette Columnist
Political Correctness in “No When”
“No When” is separate from time. It has no past, present, or future.
It is absolutely true and politically correct. It is never ambiguous,
contradictory, or incomplete. Nothing happens or changes in “No When”.
Time vibrates randomly forward and back. Cause and effect goes away.
There is no point in trying to measure it. Time requires regularity.
Instability causes infectious uncertainty. Disorder allows claiming and
concluding anything. When you drop an egg, the fragments of its shell
are accessible, but you cannot put it back together along with its spilt
yoke and white. That changes its future irreversibly. Our lives are
like that, but most of us live in the present. Some of us remember the
past.
Politically Correct
We grew up politically incorrect, but we did not realize it.
Paul
Broca, the master of nineteenth century craniometry, concluded that
brain size, facial shape, woolly hair, and skin color predicted
intelligence. It was the foundation of white superiority that Hitler
believed in. Jesse Owens’ four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics called
it into question.
Storyville
was a red light district at the turn of the twentieth century. It was a
mixing pot of musical styles, cultures, and races, where the most
beautiful girls were of mixed race. Julie, an entertainer on the Show Boat
was one of them. That 1927 musical dealt with racial prejudice and
tragic love. How does one know that they are “black”? Julie passed for
white. Her marriage became illegal and she could no longer perform for
a white audience when her black blood was discovered.
No court had struck down a ban on interracial marriage prior to 1948.
It was not until 1967 that the Supreme Court unanimously ruled
(legislated from the bench) that laws against interracial marriage were
unconstitutional. The movie, “Guess who’s coming to Dinner” and the sitcom “All in the Family” reminded us of how we really felt.
Arthur
Jensen (2002) studied the influence of genetics and race on
intelligence. But we are not intelligent enough to know what conscience
is or how it works even though it will soon drive our cars. We mistake
self-interest for empathy.
In
2003, scientists mapped the human DNA code for the first time. Armed
with computer ANOVA (analysis of variance), they found that there is
more variation within races than between them. This is what happens
when science runs up against what it means to be human. The self
fractures apart. Only people are left.
Living in Racist History
The
founding fathers wanted to abolish slavery. So wrote Glenn Beck in a
fit of patriotic hubris, but we fought a war over it. Today, our
President would identify non-citizens in the census, but they trust him
less than the North and South came to trust each other. Then, we
counted slaves as 3/5 of a person.
Anti-immigrant
sentiment thrust the Know-Nothing Party to prominence. Abraham Lincoln
wrote that they would change our Declaration to read “… all men are
created equal except Negroes, foreigners, and Catholics”. Illinois and
Indiana barred African Americans from entering their states, while
Oregon ordered all black people out.
White
America objected to Jackie Robinson’s entry into Major League Baseball
in 1947. The early fifties Arizona school books wrote of how the slave
owners treated their valuable investment well. The Amos ‘n’ Andy show
(1951-1953) made fun of blacks, treating them as incompetent and
stupid. Colored people needed guidance. Our society was structured
that way, so they agreed. If they did not show deference and obedience,
they would be sorry.
There
was de facto segregation in Mesa and Phoenix in the fifties. There was
hard core segregation and inequality in the Southern States, where
blacks could not sit at the lunch counter, drink at the “whites only”
water fountain, enter through the front door, or get a job even though
they held master’s degrees.
In
the fifties, I listened to the “race records”, played by the colored
radio station on my grandfather’s giant Philco radio. It was before
Elvis Presley. The music was delightfully “different”, but our parents
worried that it would rot our minds. They even worried about Elvis.
The musical “Memphis” describes that time. Its subject is not
only black music, but the relationship between whites and blacks, and
inter-racial romance.
In
1957, Governor Orval Faubus called out his national guard to prevent
the Little Rock Nine from attending Central High School. When Louis
Armstrong complained about how blacks were treated, we said “Don’t they
appreciate that we freed them from slavery? It’s Communists that make
them act this way.”
In
the early sixties, the pastor at my church explained that God was for
“separate but equal”. His congregation would not tolerate minorities
lowering their property values. But youth had more “soul” than the
establishment.
The
students in southern universities protested against racial
integration. They carried signs reading, “Go back to Africa, Negros”.
How do you suppose they feel about Trump’s suggestion to the five new
idealistic Congresswomen, “Go back to where you came from”?
In college, we lived together, participated in civic obligations,
planned and cooked our meals, and debated racism along with theology.
It wasn’t just God’s grace and his little book that counted. Deeds
mattered. The important thing in religion was to engage in and serve
society, not dogma. Religion had not yet become a weapon of political
ideology. We believed in the role of the church, but that is getting
harder today. Now it is solidly on the side of cruelty and the
destruction of liberals.
There was no agreement. There was controversy over things like whether
the universe was much more than 6000 years old and if all the animals
came over on the Ark. There was confusion about the theology of Paul
Tillich, and offense over the idea that faith requires doubt. But we
were not politically correct. As students, we sang “God is on our
side”. The establishment had to be turned.
We
can thank Lyndon Baines Johnson for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Eighty one Republicans approved. Only fifty nine Democrats did. By
doing the prudent thing, Johnson lost the political South. As in
musical chairs, the Republicans and Democrats changed sides. This is
the cultural and political foment that existed in Joe Biden’s early
service to our country.
At
our lunch table, the discussion turned to how Martin Luther King was
the beguiling, deceitful anti-Christ, imminent before the pending
apocalypse. Promiscuous, unfaithful, and Communistic, he should not be
granted a holiday. Governor Evan Mecham agreed. It was white society’s
self-understanding. Now, we hear it again in the GOP’s strategy. We
find it difficult to have empathy for people who are different than us.
It Hurts
In
the seventies, Civil rights opponents controlled the Senate. Biden had
to work with powerful segregationists like James Eastland of
Mississippi. There were blacks who did not want to be bused to white
schools, whites who did not want to be bused to black neighborhoods, and
strong community friendships that mattered as much as anything to the
social development of children. What is appropriate relates to
demographics, geography, finance, school quality, and local job
opportunities. These are neighborhood variables.
Racism
hurts feelings, but Kamila Harris got what she wanted. She dammed
Biden using faint praise about him not being racist and then launched
into an issue that is historical, nuanced, and not appropriate for the
hurry up of the “debate”.
Kamila
was bused to a better school, but it hurt her feelings because she
discovered that the world was imperfect. She printed T shirts and sold
them to finance her campaign, with her little girl picture on it. Such
politics is disingenuous, contrived, and motivated more by ambition
than anything else. Meaning is deeper than political correctness.
Bigotry
is an insidious disease because you don’t know when you have it. You
can’t be only partly accepting. What others do justifies one’s self,
and that comes from the top down. When our president speaks of
immigrant “infestations” from “sxxx hole countries” bringing criminals,
drug deals, and rapists, he justifies those who feel that this the
fact. It is the ground of the 9500 member dehumanizing, racist, Border
Patrol Facebook group described in recent news. It is in Lindsey
Graham’s comment justifying cruel treatment of families seeking asylum.
“Things are tough all over the world”. We have a breathtaking facility
for ignoring other people’s pain. The Art of the Deal contains a monstrous impulse revealing how our darkest urges lurk in the background of every transaction.
Trump
says that he is the moral one because he loves our country.
Evangelicals overwhelmingly agree, ignoring the majority of the Bible.
That only adds to our “Heart of Darkness” and raises a new
generation to be amoral hurting the very cause religious people argue
for. The reason their churches are shrinking is not because educated
people prevent them from believing in God.
So,
now your neighbor has a supply of crosses to burn stored in his barn.
He has hoods in his closet, and he tweets white nationalism, but he is
not racist. Evangelicals can see into his heart and they find no
hatred. He is a loyal member of the Republican Party, justified because
it is just politics, not racism. It is the evil other that disagrees
with Trump and whom he calls Godless Communists (Socialists). But his
words reveal the hidden seeds of his thought and that good or bad are
nothing more than what mommy said when he was a child. We worry about
what has happened to America’s heart. Racism should not require
something more, like conviction for a hate crime. But neither
moralizing nor edict will make any difference.
Democratic Republicans
Perhaps
the best Republican for the job is a Democrat. The big challenges we
face are bipartisan, neither Republican nor Democrat.
I
voted for Barry Goldwater many times. He often stuck his foot in his
mouth, but he was an honest man. I trusted him. I voted for John
McCain for similar reasons. I can find room to support Jeff Flake’s
ideas set forth in his 2017 book, Conscience of a Conservative. John Kasich describes policies that liberals do not find repugnant in his 2017 book, Two Paths, America Divided or United. These men thought that America would come to its senses, but apparently not.
We
need the idealism of youth, but they have not lived the problem, have
not met the reality demons. The cult of amateurism and novelty is
contradictory to experience and wisdom. Whoever becomes president is
going to be confronted by many imperfections that will require personal
sacrifice, consistent policy, and cooperation for tens of years. If we
go too far to the left, the pendulum of ideology will continue to
destructively oscillate. If the Democrats are to win, they need
something more than Trump’s game. Perhaps it is history, honesty,
experience, wisdom, and character.
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