No doubt the 2008 presidential race will go down in history as one of the most hotly-contested and controversial electoral races in history, in large part owing to the tearing down of the gender and race barriers that the candidates who ran in it represent. The one on Friday, at the University of Mississippi, promises to be politically charged not just for the history that is about to take place there, but also for the history that it recalls.
In 1962, a man named James Meredith became the face of the movement for civil rights when he attempted to become the first African American student to matriculate at Ole Miss, and caused riots to break out in the university. The uproar went well beyond the boundaries of Oxford, Mississippi, and made the state a battleground for the movement, as even the state’s segregationist governor opposed Meredith’s entry, to the point that it became necessary for then President Kennedy to send U.S. Marshals to ensure Meredith’s safely.
Having moved to the United States only two years ago, I grew up without knowing any of this. It was, and it still is, hard to imagine a segregated America only half a century ago, so different from what it is now. But having grown up with the vestiges of the Spanish-Filipino class struggle still heavily ingrained into the Philippine national psyche, I understood and felt the significance of Meredith’s moment.
But in spite of everything he accomplished for the civil rights movement, Meredith today says “nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind.” It seems almost counterintuitive, just as bewildering as it is to think of how Clarence Thomas can vote consistently against affirmative action. But to understand Thomas and Meredith is to recognize that everyone, no matter what race they belong to, has always had an inalienable right to equal opportunity in this country. I firmly believe in what the civil rights movement stood for and what it continues to stand for today. But there is something to what Meredith is saying.
It’s like that episode in West Wing, where Ainsley argues against the Equal Rights Amendment.
Because it’s humiliating. A new amendment we vote on declaring that I am equal under the law to a man? I’m mortified to discover there’s reason to believe I wasn’t before. I’m a citizen of this country. I’m not a special subset in need of your protection. I do not have to have my rights handed down to me by a bunch of old white men. The same Article 14 that protects you protects me. And I went to law school just to make sure.
Meredith makes the same fundamental argument, in his letter to the Department of Justice, that started it all. As an American citizen, just like the rest, he should not have had to fight to be able to go to school.
That Obama has chosen to keep race out of this election as much as he can is a sign that we are moving in the right direction. But the fact that he has to watch his back for every single move that he makes that could potentially conjure up the “angry black man” stereotype that have people remembering a time when both races were indeed on unequal footing is sobering.
How far have we really come, if a candidate continues to be identified by the color of his skin or her gender? When Obama stops being a “black candidate”, and when being a woman becomes less of an important factor for Sarah Palin’s nomination, maybe we’ll have gotten to where King imagined we’d get to. Certainly, you can’t distance a man from the characteristics that make him who he is. But while we’re talking about the issues, can we please forget these details?
