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Aug. 24th, 2010 06:54 am( Русский язык )
I really shouldn't watch Good Night and Good Luck. It just makes me sad and cranky about the whole "wires and lights in a box" thing.
I came to the realization last night that the Civil Rights Act turns 50... in 4 years. It's younger than my parents, one of whom is black. My father grew up in a world where he was a second class citizen, and his family was denied service, entry, and treatment based on nothing further than the color of his skin. I grew up in a world where I went where I pleased with my siblings and the most we ever got were the occasional resigned glance. In 50 years, or even 20, whose rights will we take for granted? Or whose rights will be taken away?
The Civil Rights Act. My father grew up with this as something that changed within his lifetime, the way I grew up with the Defense of Marriage act, Don't Ask Don't Tell, the end of the Cold War and the subsequent geographic confusion. I grew up with it as history. I'm getting older, but I'm not that old yet. Forgetting for a moment the advance of technology, what will be the consequences of this changing cultural landscape as a result of all these changes in our rights and privileges?
President Obama is older than the Civil Rights Act, though not so much that he probably remembers with any clarity when it was passed. He probably remembers some of the social consequences of its passing, the way we think of the social consequences of states passing gay marriage laws one by one, whether for or against. Our sitting President remembers when this country was adjusting to people who looked like him now being equals to people who looked like our last president. Something that hadn't been true until shortly after he was born. It boggles my mind to think about it this personally, but it also gives me hope for the future. The idea that I could see a world where we are not one but several steps closer to living in a world where people are judged on their merits, not on the color of their skin or their biological parts and how they relate to their psychological parts, who they wish to marry or whether or not they have or can have children.
And yes, we still have far to go. The idea that the United States could have any president that wasn't old and white and male was a joke until very recently. We still have Hollywood Stereotypes like Scary Angry Black Man, Sassy Black Woman Friend, Shrill Older Asian Woman... But these people no longer have to live in internment camps or go to separate bathrooms and restaurants and hotels to get polite treatment, and living people remember this. It's an amazing thing. A little terrifying. Where will we be 20, 50 years from now? I have no damn clue. I wonder if my paternal grandfather, rest his soul, thought the election of Obama was a good, solid step or if it was just the next logical move in the chain of events. I wonder what he thought about the Civil Rights Act. I was never very close to that side of the family, mostly due to their being pretty strict and very Protestant and I just wasn't comfortable with that as a child, but I kind of wonder. I always saw them as pretty wealthy, which may not have been the case or may have been skewed by the curve of the city in which they lived, but they also seemed kind of proud of their wealth. Not in the ostentatious way, but in the way of quiet dignity. And was this because of when they grew up? I don't know.
Heh. And now Senator McCarthy's holding forth. It's also a sign of the changing times that the people who screened this footage reported that the "actor was overdoing it." Except that's not an actor. That's Senator McCarthy. "If none of us had ever read a dangerous book, or had a friend who was different, or joined an organization that advocated change, we'd all be just the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants."
I really shouldn't watch Good Night and Good Luck. It just makes me sad and cranky about the whole "wires and lights in a box" thing.
I came to the realization last night that the Civil Rights Act turns 50... in 4 years. It's younger than my parents, one of whom is black. My father grew up in a world where he was a second class citizen, and his family was denied service, entry, and treatment based on nothing further than the color of his skin. I grew up in a world where I went where I pleased with my siblings and the most we ever got were the occasional resigned glance. In 50 years, or even 20, whose rights will we take for granted? Or whose rights will be taken away?
The Civil Rights Act. My father grew up with this as something that changed within his lifetime, the way I grew up with the Defense of Marriage act, Don't Ask Don't Tell, the end of the Cold War and the subsequent geographic confusion. I grew up with it as history. I'm getting older, but I'm not that old yet. Forgetting for a moment the advance of technology, what will be the consequences of this changing cultural landscape as a result of all these changes in our rights and privileges?
President Obama is older than the Civil Rights Act, though not so much that he probably remembers with any clarity when it was passed. He probably remembers some of the social consequences of its passing, the way we think of the social consequences of states passing gay marriage laws one by one, whether for or against. Our sitting President remembers when this country was adjusting to people who looked like him now being equals to people who looked like our last president. Something that hadn't been true until shortly after he was born. It boggles my mind to think about it this personally, but it also gives me hope for the future. The idea that I could see a world where we are not one but several steps closer to living in a world where people are judged on their merits, not on the color of their skin or their biological parts and how they relate to their psychological parts, who they wish to marry or whether or not they have or can have children.
And yes, we still have far to go. The idea that the United States could have any president that wasn't old and white and male was a joke until very recently. We still have Hollywood Stereotypes like Scary Angry Black Man, Sassy Black Woman Friend, Shrill Older Asian Woman... But these people no longer have to live in internment camps or go to separate bathrooms and restaurants and hotels to get polite treatment, and living people remember this. It's an amazing thing. A little terrifying. Where will we be 20, 50 years from now? I have no damn clue. I wonder if my paternal grandfather, rest his soul, thought the election of Obama was a good, solid step or if it was just the next logical move in the chain of events. I wonder what he thought about the Civil Rights Act. I was never very close to that side of the family, mostly due to their being pretty strict and very Protestant and I just wasn't comfortable with that as a child, but I kind of wonder. I always saw them as pretty wealthy, which may not have been the case or may have been skewed by the curve of the city in which they lived, but they also seemed kind of proud of their wealth. Not in the ostentatious way, but in the way of quiet dignity. And was this because of when they grew up? I don't know.
Heh. And now Senator McCarthy's holding forth. It's also a sign of the changing times that the people who screened this footage reported that the "actor was overdoing it." Except that's not an actor. That's Senator McCarthy. "If none of us had ever read a dangerous book, or had a friend who was different, or joined an organization that advocated change, we'd all be just the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants."
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