Sunday, January 26, 2014
What would Thurgood Marshall say about this book today? - Miles
Gilbert King’s book details a case that occurred in 1949, years before the Civil Rights movement, the march on Washington, integration of schools, the Civil Rights Act, and long before we elected a black president. My question is, how would Thurgood Marshall (or anyone associated with this case, for that matter) look at this book today? To say racism is no longer an issue is a blatant lie, but no one can deny how much has changed since the days of lynching and the Ku Klux Klan. A case similar to this one occurring today would obviously be different than the original. While blacks in the south still have horrible racism facing them, one can assume a fair trial would be held, and any harm to come to the accused would be met with justice itself. Would Marshall consider a modern trial like this to even be possible? Would he look on this case thinking that it helped spark a change in ingrained American thought, one that essentially brought blacks to equal status in the country, as the “Dawn of a New America” in the book’s title would suggest, or would Marshall simply see it as just another case? I’d never heard of the case before reading this book, it isn’t even on Marshall’s Wikipedia page (among other sources) and without a bit of digging, it would seem like it doesn’t even exist. Would this be a case still in Marshall’s mind were he still alive, or would it simply blend in with all the others?
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First I want to say that Marshall would probably love the way this book depicts the situation. As a lawyer striving to make America a better place for African Americans to live, he would be refreshed by a white author who actually took the side of the accused. This might show that yes our country has come a long way, that we recognize the pure injustice of this case and are infuriated that we can do nothing about it. It ticks me off that McCall got away with it and that means something. It means that our definition of justice has changed. What was once a country where a white man could do what he wanted to people who were not white men has morphed into a country that emphasized equality for all races and sexes. However, when I say emphasizes, I don't mean enforces. I believe that we have come far enough that many people wish to say that we have expunged racism all together. They want to take remaining racists and sweep them under the rug like they're not even there. This solves nothing. Our country has made great strides certainly, but the undertones of racism still permeate the surface just enough to remind us that we have a long way still to come.
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