ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 23, 1997 TAG: 9701230012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN YOUNG
HE'S A Generation Xer who probably won't appreciate the label - first because he doesn't appreciate labels, second because he particularly doesn't like one that's come to signify a lack of passion.
He has passion. He cares about righting wrongs.
That's why he went to see ``Ghosts of Mississippi'' in an almost-empty theater late one night. That's why he was disgusted to see so few in that screening room and so many headed to the one showing ``Beavis and Butt-head Do America.'' ``You'd think they'd want to know about something important in our history,'' he said.
Yes, you'd think. But, heh-heh, history - that's ``history.''
I saw ``Ghosts of Mississippi'' in a theater with maybe three dozen people, more than I expected. But my inventory found only a couple of them to be younger than 31.
Thirty-one years is how long it took to convict the murderer of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Byron de la Beckwith grinned his way through two hung-jury trials - his hat tipped to all-white juries. Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett appeared before one of those juries to shake Beckwith's hand.
What a story. I must say, the movie is somewhat less than satisfying - too little emphasis on what Evers did that would make him worth a white racist's bullet and too much emphasis on the white attorney who finally convicted the goon. For riveting drama, this takes a backseat to the wrenching but historically flawed ``Mississippi Burning.''
``Mississippi Burning'' also focused on white heroes, a telling point considering how America came to care about barbarism in Mississippi in the first place. It started really caring when three Freedom Summer volunteers, two white, one black, disappeared. Later they were found buried in a levee.
The nation watched for news of these volunteers' fates with bated breath. In the weeks up until the discovery, authorities dredged the waterways in Neshoba County without success. Oh, they made discoveries in the soupy waters: nameless black bodies, unfit for the nightly news. One might say our news judgment has changed too little.
Anyone who takes a look at the social drift in our country has got to acknowledge that we have taken only baby steps toward racial harmony in the three decades since Evers died in his driveway.
In his inauguration speech, President Clinton referred to racial friction as ``America's constant curse.'' That doesn't sound like ancient history to me.
But the president wasn't up on the podium to talk as a pessimist. ``Our rich texture of racial, religious and political diversity will be a godsend in the 21st century,'' he said. Some out there will disagree. Of course, so doing they'll not acknowledge what history tells us. In spite of so many differences, America prospered. It must continue. It has no choice.
Is racial friction history or is it the future foretold? Black columnist Carl Rowan, who doesn't have a reputation as an alarmist, has a new book called "The Coming Race War in America." I haven't read Rowan's book. I'm not sure I want to, for the same reason I didn't finish "Pet Semetary": just too scary.
One need not be ready to share Rowan's prediction to acknowledge that the elements are there for real horrors. A race riot shut down Los Angeles one day in May four years ago. The people in escape haven St. Petersburg, Fla., didn't move far enough away to eliminate racial strife from their itinerary.
Just two examples of how people can be misled to believe that there's a social island in our society where the imperative of racial harmony can be made moot, and how on the time line toward that harmony, we're barely removed from Mississippi, 1963.
John Young is editorial page editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald.
- Cox News Service
LENGTH: Medium: 72 linesby CNB