Do Not Be Discouraged!
You know, sometimes when I get down about all the bigoted, discriminatory, vile, and violent things people do to one another I remember these words from Martin Luther King, Jr.:
"The arch of history is long, but it bends towards justice."
I get discouraged when I learn about conservative groups in this country (and in others) -- most notably religious fundamentalists in many religions -- successfully squashing the rights of others. It freaks me out that these close-minded people make so much headway in legally depriving citizens of what I see as fundamental rights that should apply to all.
MLK, Jr.'s words are especially powerful to me because I believe them. Our country has always been inconsistent in extending and protecting the rights of its people, and if one follows the history of rights in this country year by year or decade by decade it can look pretty depressing.
However, if one looks at the country's history as a whole -- or even world history as a whole -- we see what King meant. The human experience on the broadest level really does bend toward justice. Societies are more accepting now than they've ever been, even when one takes into account our setbacks. It's true that nonwhites all over the world have more rights, that women and children have more rights, that homosexual and transgendered people have more rights, that the poor, ill, and disabled have more rights. On and on.
I'm not the kind of historian who encourages others to look at history as a linear path on which human progress will march indefinitely (that's called the Whiggish view of history -- the concept of ever-increasing progress from one generation to the next). In this case, however, it does seem that human societies are moving in a unilateral direction toward acceptance of diversity in all its forms.
It's refreshing to think that even though conservatives are having a heyday right now banning gay marriage, suffocating reproductive rights, eliminating immigrant rights, and supporting the Bush administration's trampling of our Constitution that in the end -- maybe a few years from now, maybe a few centuries from now -- they will not prevail. It's a matter of winning the battles but losing the war.
History has played this out time and time again and the long-term victors are never those who hate and discriminate. The lasting victors are those who adopt accepting frames of mind. The real victors are those who make it their duty to protect people who cannot protect themselves, and who champion the rights of all human beings simply because we are all human beings.
Legal and social justice are, in fact, winning over humanity, and I'm glad for it.
I get discouraged when I learn about conservative groups in this country (and in others) -- most notably religious fundamentalists in many religions -- successfully squashing the rights of others. It freaks me out that these close-minded people make so much headway in legally depriving citizens of what I see as fundamental rights that should apply to all.
MLK, Jr.'s words are especially powerful to me because I believe them. Our country has always been inconsistent in extending and protecting the rights of its people, and if one follows the history of rights in this country year by year or decade by decade it can look pretty depressing.
However, if one looks at the country's history as a whole -- or even world history as a whole -- we see what King meant. The human experience on the broadest level really does bend toward justice. Societies are more accepting now than they've ever been, even when one takes into account our setbacks. It's true that nonwhites all over the world have more rights, that women and children have more rights, that homosexual and transgendered people have more rights, that the poor, ill, and disabled have more rights. On and on.
I'm not the kind of historian who encourages others to look at history as a linear path on which human progress will march indefinitely (that's called the Whiggish view of history -- the concept of ever-increasing progress from one generation to the next). In this case, however, it does seem that human societies are moving in a unilateral direction toward acceptance of diversity in all its forms.
It's refreshing to think that even though conservatives are having a heyday right now banning gay marriage, suffocating reproductive rights, eliminating immigrant rights, and supporting the Bush administration's trampling of our Constitution that in the end -- maybe a few years from now, maybe a few centuries from now -- they will not prevail. It's a matter of winning the battles but losing the war.
History has played this out time and time again and the long-term victors are never those who hate and discriminate. The lasting victors are those who adopt accepting frames of mind. The real victors are those who make it their duty to protect people who cannot protect themselves, and who champion the rights of all human beings simply because we are all human beings.
Legal and social justice are, in fact, winning over humanity, and I'm glad for it.
posted by MW at Thursday, January 19, 2006
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