A New Day

I can remember watching television with my parents as a kid. On the nightly news I saw black men, women and children in the south being beaten by policemen, attacked by dogs and knocked down by firemen using fire hoses turned on at full force. I was both horrified and confused. I was brought up to believe that policemen and firemen were supposed to help people and yet before my eyes these public servants were attacking peaceful people and arresting them. Their only crime seemed to be that they wanted the right to vote. But didn’t everyone have the right to vote in America? They wanted the same rights as white Americans and yet for some reason they were not equal, they were not entitled. I watched news stories barring them from schools and universities and being refused service at southern restaurants. Rosa Parks was even arrested for not sitting in the back of the bus with other blacks.

How could this be? It did not seem right and yet one of my earliest memories as a child taught me that blacks were different. On my first train trip with my grandmother in the mid 1950’s I encountered the Jim Crow laws. Blacks were confined to “Jim Crow” train cars and we had to pass through their space to sit in the white car ahead of us. I still remember the look of bemusement on the faces of those tired, old black men and the look of embarrassment on my grandmother’s face as I asked to sit in their car.

I grew up with racial jokes and black stereotypes passed down from friends and family, television and old movies, but things were changing. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other black leaders would not be denied. They marched, were arrested and beaten and even killed for their belief in freedom and equality in a country that demanded their service, yet refused to serve them. I saw the rise of the Black Power Movement with its clenched black fist and black exploitation films. I witnessed forced busing and quotas as a way to “even the score” for years of discrimination and segregation. While it created racial resentment, tension, fear and mistrust…by some measures…it worked. Over time, as a society, we came to accept black equality in our schools, our place of work and in our government.

In our rush to “even the score” and make things right, some mistakes were made. Our government created a welfare system that paid not traditional families, but unwed women and girls for children born into poverty. Fathers in a family meant no welfare. The view was that if a father was present then he should provide for his children. Generations of father-less children grew-up on the streets in poverty and crime. It was considered too costly for welfare to include higher education, technical training and jobs. Black families suffered the most from this short-sighted policy and program. Our prisons swelled as young black men saw no reason for education or even marriage. The real way to fame and fortune was dealing drugs or if you had talent…sports. Bling was king for too many black men who saw no other way out of poverty and discrimination. It was a way to gain respect.

In my lifetime, I have witnessed a new day dawn. With the inauguration of Barack Obama as our 44th President of the United States of America, black men and women were given a new vision and a new hope. America took a giant step forward in so many ways. In Barack Obama’s own words: “We are not a black America and a white America. We are not a red America and a blue America. We are the United States of America.” From this day forward, the color of our skin, our religion, our gender or our sexual orientation should no longer limit nor assure our potential for achievement.

God Bless America!

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