Via Ezra klein, I see that Sixties movement leader Tom Hayden has posed a set of questions to candidate Obama. An excerpt:
Your problem, if I may say so out loud, and with all respect, is that the deepest rationale for your running for president is the one that you dare not mention very much, which is that you are an African-American with the possibility of becoming president. The quiet implication of your centrism is that all races can live beyond the present divisions, in the higher reality above the dualities. You may be right. You see the problems Hillary Clinton encounters every time she implies that she wants to shatter all those glass ceilings and empower a woman, a product of the feminist movement, to be president? Same problem. So here's my question: how can you say let's "turn the page" and leave all those Sixties' quarrels behind us if we dare not talk freely in public places about a black man or a woman being president? Doesn't that reveal that on some very deep level that we are not yet ready to "turn the page"?[...]
Although he clearly doesn't realize it, Hayden is answering his own question. It isn't a question of whether or not we talk about this issue. That's not it at all. What matters is whether or not we feel we need, no, must, talk about it in this way. If we are truly beyond this issue, discussing it would be unnecessary. The problem, however, is that either you see this simple fact or you do not. But explaining it to someone who does not see is something that is apparently beyond my ability, because I've been sitting here struggling with this post for well over an hour now. But rather than simply give up....
Let me try this two different ways.
Once upon a time not all that long ago, this nation had separate water fountains for blacks and white. Now we do not. But this is not something we continue to discuss. To continue to discuss it would, in fact, be absurd. This water fountain issues simply is no longer relevant. And for those of us born after it was resolved, it is hard to imagine how it ever could have been an issue at all.
Now... no doubt there are many Americans who remember those days, and no doubt there are some who still consider them from time to time when they use a fountain. But for the vast majority of the rest of us, it neither is now nor ever has been an issue worthy of our consideration. We recognize that the separation of races was absurd, and we have moved on. Our silence isn't a sign that this is "a subject that dare not speak its name." Our silence is a sign that this issue simply isn't an issue at all. The battle is finished. We have moved on.
Or... To oversimplify in ways that may help clarify....
Think of it like a knot in a rope. First there was a rope. Then a knot was tied. The knot was strong. It was substantial. It was real, so real in fact that those who saw the rope could focus on nothing else. Over time, those who knew the rope prior to this knot died off, and eventually the world was made up only of people who were born after the knot had first appeared.
But not everyone liked the knot. In fact, many people recognized that the knot didn't belong in the rope at all. The rope, they argued, should be returned to its natural state. The knot, they declared, must be removed. And eventually, after enormous struggle and effort, the knot was untied. The rope was freed. Things were as they always should have been.
Suddenly there was no knot; there was only rope. Where did the knot go? Once it had defined the rope, but now it was gone. Those who remembered the time with The Knot debated its importance. Why hadn't The Knot been untied sooner? Why had it taken so long? What would future generations think of The Knot? How would they choose to live in a Knot-free world? How would they remember the Era of Great Struggles over the Untying of the Knot? How would this great story be told?
Eventually, of course, those future generations were born. Knowing nothing of The Knot beyond what they learned in school - having no personal memory of its existence - they had no reason to consider. To them, this obsession of the Knot Generation made no sense. To them these questions simply did not matter. The Knot had been untied. The battle had been won. It was, they thought, time to move on from these endless Knot-related obsessions. And besides, they thought, wasn't that the point of those who had for so long struggled to live in a Knot-free world? There were other issues to consider now, things far more important that needed their attention. This attachment to this Knot That Was No More was unhealthy.
These new generations weren't transcending The Knot, nor were they hiding their true feelings about importance of all things Knot-related. They weren't ignoring The Knot, because in truth the knot was gone. The rope had new problems, and it was to those problems they were trying to turn.
Tom Hayden cannot move past the issues of race and gender because, for him and his generation, these issues were everything. The personal was political, and the political was personal. To him, to turn the page is to walk away from everything that matters. But to us, to the generations who came after The Struggle, these issues aren't central. They aren't what matter most. We have moved on. No matter what else Mr. Hayden might say:
You were ten years old when the Sixties ended, so it is the formative story of your childhood. The polarizations that you want to transcend today began with life-and-death issues that were imposed on us. No one chose to be "extreme" or "militant" as a lifestyle preference. It was an extreme situation that produced us. On one side were armed segregationists, on the other peaceful black youth. On one side were the destroyers of Vietnam, on the other were those who refused to submit to orders. On the one side were those keeping women in inferior roles, on the other were those demanding an equal rights amendment. On one side were those injecting chemical poisons into our rivers, soils, air and blood streams, on the other were the defenders of the natural world. On one side were the perpetrators of big money politics, on the other were keepers of the plain democratic tradition. Does anyone believe those conflicts are behind us?
Our conflicts may look similar to you, Mr. Hayden, but no matter how much you might wish otherwise they are not the same. Where are today's "armed segregationists"? Where are "who refused to submit to orders"? Or those "demanding an equal rights amendment"? Are the struggles women and minorities face today truly identical to the ones they faced in the 1960s and 1970s? Do you honestly believe we have made so little progress that 40 years on a new generation of young adults sees the world in the same ways you once did? Do you really have so little faith in your own life's work?
Your generation saw the world as bipolar. We who have come after you do not. That changes everything. We don't want to have your conversation. We are ready to have our own. Once upon a time you led. Now, please, good sir...its time for you to get out of the way.
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