"Struggling for Social Progress: From King to Obama"

Picking up my copy of “The New Yorker” recently I noted the following bit of history. “Slaves helped build the white house…slaves worked as sawyers, quarrymen, carpenters, stonemasons, brick makers. Such was the fabric of the new republic; twelve American presidents owned slaves, eight while in office.

Now fast forward some 200 years. In almost exactly 48 hours the 44th president of the U.S. will take the oath of office. The choice of the electorate, given the history of this nation, tells us a lot about ourselves as a people and about historical turning points that bring about increments of societal innovation and cultural transformation. Every group of people, whether tribe or nation, tends to lock sets and prejudices-fixed popular outlooks. Enlightened social change is quite rare. But we seem to be one at one of those moments in our collective life of re-calibrating our values and re-imaging our future. Such events call for celebration, and we will celebrate next Tuesday morning. But such unprecedented and innovative moments call also for analysis and perspective. This particular inauguration demands of us special care in the historical perspective we bring to it, lest we diminish or exaggerate its meanings and portents. So permit me to talk with you this morning about the perennial struggle for progressive social change-perspectives, you might say, from veterans of a long march.

Let me begin with the matter most talked about and foremost in the minds of most people: The pigmentation of our new president. No, I do not use the term race, and for a reason: genetically and in terms of our DNA, we homosapians are one organic species-with wide variations in physical characteristics: pigmentation, hair texture, configuration of eyes, etc. We know, more or less. That race is a fiction. Yet it is a concept we cling to. And what has always been a major source of misery and grief to our species is our deeply ingrained tendency to view people different from ourselves and our group apart from and above these “others.” We use the term “race,” accordingly, to distinguish ourselves and our group from others who are different. And one of the most visible markers of difference among us is skin color. America was settled, initially, mainly by Europeans with light colored skin and America, throughout its history and in spite of waves of immigration, has imaged itself as a “white people” and embedded white supremacy in its laws and attitudes for most of its history. As James Baldwin put it: “By taking whiteness as the normative color, or really, not as a color at all, the heart of racism becomes the insidious power of privilege accorded to those with this feature. At the heart of racism are not simply individual acts of prejudice, but rather the power of privilege whiteness-which mainly goes unacknowledged.” What makes the event on the capital steps next Tuesday so emotionally powerful, so culturally transformative and so morally progressive is that one of those second class citizens of the highest honor the nation can bestow. Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th President of the United States: A black family president in the oval office. (Put aside that Obama, like Tiger Woods, is biracial or multi-racial. The pigmentation, as always, is the defining marker.) And this amazing social change a mere 50 years after the fire hoses and attack dogs and southern sheriffs denied black people their most basic civil rights and human dignity- And when discrimination in jobs and segregation in housing and racial prejudice deeply pervaded and stained American society. Next Tuesday will clearly be a moment of long awaited and tragically delayed social progress-a moment when Americans at long last demonstrate that we can judge people, in Martin Luther King’s beautiful words. “Not by the color of their skin but by the quality of their character.”

It must be inserted here that we, as a people, did not reach this point without sacrifice, bloodshed, bravery, and skillful organization. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s were the culmination of a very long march of dedicated reformers who first saw slavery as the horror it was, the abolitionists, and who, following the Civil War, continued the struggle for equal rights, employing moral suasion and political action and economic pressures. In all these varied ways, incremental social progress was being made in a nation permeated with racial injustice.

In a broader sense, the turning point we are navigating is not altogether about race. It, generically, is about groups of people surmounting disadvantage. Two brutal social realities have been rooted deeply in our collective life. First, there are those who, historically, have been disadvantaged in our country-any number of groups, but mainly those of color. And second, there are those who, those in Baldwin’s words, who exhibit the feature of whiteness-and, I might add, the feature of maleness. We are both social realties are manifestly unfair and immoral-That the gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged must begin to close.

Furthermore, it must surely be apparent that the long march toward racial equality is just one step along the road toward progressive social innovation. For example, we initiated radical innovations in the roles we assign government. A free and unregulated market for the governance of our economic life has long been an uncritical object of reverence and faith for the American establishment. Among the many economic models it is surely among the best. It rewards creative enterprise and, when it is working well, between boom and bust cycles, provides, however unevenly, wealth and jobs. But it is not without its witnessing and not for the first time. Driven by the quests for bottom line profit and growth, for capturing and not distributing material gains or monetary benefits evenly or justly; It is painfully susceptible to the excesses of greed ever greater material consumption hastens the depletion of places individual and corporate gain over community values to the fact that it is a system that must be constrained and regulated for the public good.

The quest for social progress clearly must operate on multiple fronts. We are living through transforming innovations in our collective attitudes toward race and economic policy. As an aging and unreconstructed liberal, I am beginning to sense the sweet aroma of social progress. Social progress is an ambiguous and controversial term, meaning different things to different groups. Nevertheless, it has concrete features and mandates. As we have noted, it means taking another small step toward a post-racial, multicultural landscape. Further, in a broad sense, social progress means consistently placing the public good ahead of private gain. It means reducing the gap between the haves and the have nots and finding ways to make medical care and decent housing and fair wage employment available to all. And, at this time in our life on this planet, it means making social and economic progress compatible with a sustainable environment-reducing the human footprint on our fragile and depletable planet.

If this seems a formidable agenda, I think it is a doable one. But when I say that, I do not have in mind only a public agenda. To make any measure of social progress there must first be a foundation sea change in the hearts, the attitudes, the mind-sets and consciousness of ordinary people-like you and me. This is the change of heart that Dr. King called for that day in Montgomery, Alabama. We must learn to rejoice in the pluralism and diversity that is America- to luxuriate in the delicious reality of Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Latin Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans-all apart of the extended family that is America-a collage of cultures and ethnicities, a diversity of accents and languages, a full spectrum of religions and a rainbow of colors-living together, not simply in tolerance, but in mutual respect and with care for their outwardly different neighbors.

In many ways it is hard to look at the world today and not be outraged and depressed. These ideals are still largely muted and unrealized in our time. A new administration may bring hopeful vision, but, as we well know, it must interface with entrenched and powerful countervailing forces. There is no certainty that these dreams of social change will be realized. But if we as a people really want it and will work ceaselessly for it, the mind-sets that have denied our unity and created legions of the disadvantaged get the sense that, however incrementally, changes for the ancient prejudices slowly losing their power. This turning point will not birth a paradise or a utopia, but if we have hope and work together to bring it about-a better future awaits us. In the words of the Talmud: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obliged to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”