September 16, 2013
By Mickey Friedman
These are indeed great days for America. For as we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the historic March on Washington, there are everywhere the clear signs that the racial divide is dissolving before us.
Sing Hallelujah, I say. No business as usual, but rather the autumn of freedom and equality.
I speak first of this year’s MTV Awards, for surely there was no clearer example of the crumbling color line than Miley Cyrus’ spirited attempt to be as insulting to black women as some black men have been in recent years. The once Disneyette, enthusiastic tongue afloat, twerked with the best of them, smacking a black fanny like there was no tomorrow. The MTV Awards a clarion testament to the once bold notion that bad taste belongs to no one race, that excess and egocentrism can, with prolonged struggle, trump color. And so I say, Sing Hallelujah.
Ah but this is one small example, some skeptics might argue.
Stay with me, please. For I have marched with Martin more than once.
And standing there in the August sun on that glorious day fifty years ago in our nation’s capitol who could have imagined a black Attorney-General eroding privacy rights and civil liberties with the zeal of the whitest advocates of nullification. Clearly today we are color-blind, and this Attorney-General shall be judged not for the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.
So I ask, how can you not Sing Hallelujah as our black officials send the whistle-blowers and truth-tellers off to serve time in cells much like those which hosted Martin?
Yes I know, two examples a convincing case make not. And so I humbly offer the most impressive example of all. Reminding my skeptical readers that we move ever closer to that critical moment when our Cruise missiles will soar, and every Syrian hill and every Syrian mountain shall be made low and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. And a proud black president shall lead us into war where once upon a time only whites dared snooker us.
And so when that first missile slams into Damascus everyone will have been transformed forevermore. Because surely this will be the day when all God’s American children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountain side. Let freedom ring.”
For it was a black president who drew this firm red line in the shifting sand. A black president who defied the wishy-washy world, and chose the strength of unilateral, plus the French, retaliation rather than the weakness of more words. No measly Criminal Court. No U.N.
For when it comes to the exercise of American military might, there is no white and no black. And as the white Bush shocked and awed the Iraqis, so too will the black Obama bomb Assad into an apology.
For irrefutable evidence knows no black or white. For satellite images we can’t or won’t share know no color. For surely a black president can say “this is not Iraq” with a straight face. And have as hard a time proving which of the oh so many Syrian monsters deserve our wrath.
And when push comes to shove, our black president can bring bombs, misery, terror, and inadvertently strengthen Al-Qaeda, with the same bravado as our white ones.
As we Americans know, and as the Afghans, Iraqis, Libyans found out, there are ways to violate international law and there are ways to violate international law. Their chemicals, our Cruises.
I marched with Martin in Washington DC. I marched with Martin in Alabama. I marched with Martin in New York, New York.
I’m very proud to say I believed with Martin that we could hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. That we could transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful sympathy of brotherhood. That with our faith we would work together, pray together, struggle together, go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that one day we will be free.
Of course, neither of us could know the challenges that the decades would bring.
Neither of us could know that one day, black and white, we would twerk together.
Neither of us could know that one day, black and white, we would jail Manning together.
Or hunt Snowden together.
Neither of us could know that, black and white together, we would let the crooked bankers bank their obscene bonuses, let the swindlers flourish, and make the war-makers even richer while the poor, black and white, grew poorer.
Neither one of us imagined we would hurl that stone of hope into Syria.
Sing Hallelujah. One day’s dream, another day’s nightmare. I miss you, Martin. We deserve better.