Today’s politics gets breathless coverage because Trump, skillfully, dominates headlines with bluster. I’ve never seen anyone who can command a room like he can.
But when it comes to racial politics, the country — including the Miami Valley — tells a different story.
The Dayton Foundation, University of Dayton and the National Conference for Community and Justice of Greater Dayton are among the organizations with strong DEI statements on their websites. School districts, businesses, and churches are in the midst of Black History Month celebrations, which have been attacked as part of the anti-DEI hysteria.
NBC News even reported that the White House had ordered the end of special observances like Black History Month and various agencies complied. But as typical with anything Trump, he sowed confusion when he signed a Black History Month proclamation praising five heroes — Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Sowell, Justice Clarence Thomas, and — wait for it — Tiger Woods. Really.
How do you stop an observance when the President signs a proclamation for it?
The moment always seems worse when you live in it. It can feel as if equality is being slowly strangled to death so people with societal advantage can keep it.
Folks, take a breath. We’ve been here before. Many times. And each time, society corrected its misguided behavior.
During the Indian Wars of the 1800s, Gen. William T. Sherman penned one report entitled “The Useless Indian.” He also carried out the brutal slaughter of men, women, and children, using government policy as justification.
“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, and children.” He later issued an order of “utter annihilation” that went beyond the rules of war.
We now know this as intolerance.
Italians were so reviled that they were lynched, stereotyped as criminals and, after arrival from Italy, forced to live in slums upon arrival in the United States. The book, “How the Other Half Lives,” details how as many as 20 people lived in a 12x12 space and how others lived with hogs and their manure.
We now know this as intolerance.
In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order that banned gay men and women from working in the federal government. The order came amid the Lavender Scare, during which lawmakers used homophobia to justify discriminatory policies and win over voters who believed sexual deviants were after their young boys.
We now know this as intolerance.
There are lots of other instances of manipulated social angst. Society denounced interracial marriage, with presidents and judges condemning such unions. In 1964, a judge hearing an interracial marriage case wrote, “Marriages between whites and negroes absolutely void, but by prohibiting and punishing such unnatural alliances with severe penalties.” It wasn’t until 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the so-called anti-miscegenation laws.
We now know marriage prohibitions to be intolerant, too.
In all of those instances, American society — well, much of it, anyway — has recalibrated its thinking. Challenges to anti-gay laws led to the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that states can’t prohibit same-sex marriages. There are now about 741,000 same-sex marriages in the United States, according to the American Community Survey.
Nearly one in five new marriages are interracial, and today, almost no one cares. Some 94% of people surveyed by Gallup say marrying someone of a different race is just fine.
What’s happening today with the anti-DEI, anti-LGBTQ+ fervor is a continuation of society’s incivility which will eventually be followed by civility. Citizens always realize they need to make up their minds free of political influence and determine whether society’s harmed by whatever the flavor of the month is.
Society wasn’t damaged by Native Americans, Italians, gay people, interracial or same-sex marriages, all of which today are elements of a diverse society.
The current political and societal shift has pained liberals who see a less tolerant society. History shows us this won’t last.
Ray Marcano’s column appears on these pages each Sunday.