"A nation of cowards", is how our new Attorney General, Eric Holder, described race relations in the United States a couple of days ago.
That sounded odd to me. Maybe he meant that relations between blacks and whites wasn't perfect. What is? But, if he was implying that there hasn't been a change for the better in this country, well...he's just plain wrong.
The simple fact that he is an African-American Attorney General appointed by an African-American President of the United States says it all for me. As recently as twenty years ago someone my age would have told you that was impossible. Never going to happen. Yet, here we are.
I have long harbored a theory that most of us enjoy lifespans that are directly related to how much change we can handle. One-hundred years of updating the old cerebral Rolodex, (Wow, that dates me.), is only for the bravest among us.
"He treats us like men. He lets us wear two earrings."------an actual quote from a contemporary professional athlete, and moron, regarding his coach.
A quote like that would have had my father, were he still around, begging for somebody to kill him. There was no room for the concept of ANY man wearing even one earring left in his acceptance of change. I am barely able to grasp that one myself, but you get the idea.
Change happens! Your perception of it is all relative. You accept or reject it in degrees until you're "full up" and decide to cease to be among us.
This is not the same country I grew up in. Not even close. Some of that is good and some of that is bad.
In 1970 Linda and I moved from the frozen tundra of South Dakota to Gainesville, Florida where I had been accepted for graduate school at the University of Florida. To support us I took a job as the morning man for WUWU radio. (Try saying those call letters fast three times.) The station was located in the Gainesville Mall on the Northeast side of town. My first morning on the job I arrived at the mall around five to prepare for my six o'clock sign-on. As I turned the key in the mall's darkened doorway, my eye caught sight of what appeared to be a pile of rubbish or something in the far corner of the entrance. I thought nothing of it until the pile, which I could now see was a bunch of cardboard, started to move. A small round black man stood and ambled toward me. "Geezus...I'm going to buy it right here! On my first day" was all I could think.
"Hello sir...it's me Henry," said the man who was toothless and easily into his seventies. Henry Anthony was the station janitor. He was sleeping under cardboard at the door to the mall because he did not own an alarm clock and was not trusted with a key to the premises. He would rise each morning when he "thought" it was time to get up; hop on his battered and rusty old bicycle and head for his job at what he referred to as "double woo radio". I was astounded.
Henry and I became good friends over the course of the year I worked at the station. He was one of the kindest and most decent people I have ever known. I learned that he had been employed by the owner, "Mr. Mims", for more than twenty years. More than twenty years and the guy wouldn't give him a key???!!!! What kind of redneck jerk was this guy? (The kind who makes the Army look like a vacation is what I later learned.) It took me about two days before I had a key made for Henry, (our secret), and had loaned him one of my many alarm clocks. We would arrive together and go about our very different jobs, each of us happy in his own way. While I played the hits Henry sang hymns as he vacuumed the floors and emptied the wastebaskets. Sometimes, because of his poor eyesight, he would barge into the studio while I was on the air singing at the top of his lungs. Most of the time his singing was better than the contemporary crap that was on the air and if I hadn't needed the job I would have featured him on the show. He was a character, but Mr. Mims was a humorless, cranky old man who would not have appreciated such programming genius.
Henry had a large family. All his kids were grown; most had college educations and he was proud of each and every one of them. I often wondered why they didn't make sure that he was well taken care of until I began to understand that Henry was too proud to ever let them know when he needed anything. He took care of himself.
Henry Anthony has been gone for more than twenty years now. He'd probably seen about all the change he could tolerate.
I often wonder what he would think about a black family in the White House. I'll bet that is some change Henry could have handled. "Tell Mr. Mims to get bent."
Race cowards? Henry wouldn't think so.
Grow up Mr. Holder.
