Black History Matters

As part of its program for Black History month, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) recently showed “Stars in My Crown,” a 1950 film that dealt with a small Southern town right after the Civil War. The film was based on a  1947 novel of the same name by Joe David Brown, a writer from Alabama who is best known for “Paper Moon,” another novel that became an even more successful film. 

In viewing this  film, it seemed obvious that its creators, back in 1950, included an indictment of racial prejudice and violence. Nevertheless, in an interview after the showing on TCM, a black critic claimed that the film was itself racist, a claim that the host did not dispute. Why is it racist?

 “Stars in My Crown” is the story of an ex-Confederate soldier who becomes a preacher after the war and takes up duties in a small Southern town that resembles a movie Western frontier town in its lawlessness and lack of religion. Joe David Brown claimed that the preacher was based on the life of his Alabama grandfather. 

Initially, the preacher, played imposingly by Joel McCrae, uses his guns and physical presence to gain the attention and respect of the townspeople, but then puts away his guns and relies on his spiritual strength to gain a respected place. He marries one of the townswomen, and even adopts her orphaned nephew. Much of the film is seen through the eyes of this boy. Together they establish a congregation and build a church. 

TCM presented the film as part of Black History month because one of its core conflicts concerns the one black man in the town. He is an elderly ex-slave, Uncle Famous, played by Juano Hernandez, who had apparently been given his freedom as well as a small farmstead by his former white master. 

Actually, he lives outside of town and supports himself with the produce of his garden, animals, and fish from a nearby stream. His skill as a fisherman is legendary and he has instructed  most of the white boys in the town in the fine art of fishing. He is revered and respected by all. All is well until a local businessman tries to buy his property in order to continue a mica mining project that employs many of the townsmen.

The old man rejects the offer. He explains that he  is self-sufficient and doesn’t need the money, and that he would have nowhere to go if he left his small farm. The businessman then launches a campaign of harassment against the old black man, and has thugs destroy his crops. When that fails to move him, the businessman forms a gang, complete with Klan costumes, that rides out to lynch the old man. Only the intervention of the white preacher saves the old man.  He reminds the members of the lynch mob of all that Uncle Famous has done for them and their children over the years, and the shamed mob disperses.

Why is the film racist? If I can remember correctly, there were two reasons. First, the critic did not like the portrayal of the old man as friendly, fatherly, kindly, wise, and generous. He was not angry or bitter. He was even thankful that his old master had emancipated him. He was even grateful for his small farm and never considered it a kind of reparation for his years in slavery. In other words, he was not a modern Black Lives Matter protestor.

I am not an expert on American Reconstruction history, but I have read “Up from Slavery,” the autobiography of Booker T. Washington, a former slave who went on to become one of the most famous and esteemed figures in America during his lifetime. His life no longer matters today, and I did not see one mention of him during this Black History month.

Like Uncle Famous, Booker T. Washington is the wrong kind of Black man. He was only a child when the Civil war ended. Even though emancipated, most slaves were uneducated, illiterate, and knew no other world than the plantation on which they had served. Although they were free to leave, most former slaves chose to remain on the plantations that still needed their labor. I doubt if they are covered in black history classes. 

Booker T. Washington was among the first to leave when members of his family sought work in the mines of West Virginia. He was a child laborer but passionately anxious to learn how to read and write. His first tutor was an older black boy and once he learned to read there was no stopping him. On his way he  continued his education in schools founded by white Northerners to educate the emancipated slaves. He became a famous educator himself and founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In his autobiography, I recall no bitterness or anger. Rather, there was thankfulness for the help he had received on the way, and for the great opportunity that America had given him. 

The film is also considered racist today because its sympathetic portrayal  of the white preacher and other white people in town does not fit a modern systemic racist narrative. The film was based on a real-life story. To make everyone a stereotype, in fiction or in real life, is to do a disservice to individuals, white or black, and to falsify history.  

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Diversity and Uniformity

President Biden’s Cabinet is supposed to be the most diverse in history.  He and his advisors obviously made a deliberate attempt to include every ethnic group, gender identification, and skin color imaginable. It reminds me of the old adage.

It is quite a common mistake—to find a job for the man, and not the right man for the job.

How is Pete Buttigieg, the new Secretary of Transportation qualified for that job?  Other than being an openly gay man, he was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, a depressed and crime-ridden city that he obviously wished to escape. 

One also thinks immediately of Vice-President Kamela Harris. In the Democratic debates leading up to the last election, she appeared to be the least popular of all the candidates and was one of the first to drop out of the race. Even the Democrats did not think she was qualified. Nevertheless, she was hand-picked by Biden because she was a woman, and a dark skinned one as well. 

Unfortunately, there is no diversity of opinion in the President’s Cabinet, or in any of his other appointments. They all think the same way. It is the same thing in the now Democratic controlled Congress. The Democrats pride themselves on their diversity, but all the members of the party must vote the same way no matter what states or districts they represent. Black, White, Male, Female, LGBTQ, what difference does it make? In the recent votes on the proposed stimulus package, Democrats were unanimous in voting as they were told. Who do they really represent?

 It is true that  Republicans were unanimous in opposition but at least a couple of mavericks like Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, and Liz Cheyney will occasionally step out of line, and invariably gain the plaudits of the liberal media for voting their conscience. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal lauded the seven Republican Senators who voted to impeach President Trump, and quoted Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century political philosopher, on the importance of voting one’s conscience.  Even former Vice President Mike Pence gets plaudits from liberals for certifying the recent election results.  When are Democrats allowed to vote their own conscience?

Despite an abundance of laws and regulations, there is very little diversity throughout the Federal government. We just have to look at the fact that 95% of the vote in the District of Columbia, the National Capitol and center of government, went to Democrat Joe Biden in the last election. The growth of the Federal bureaucracy in the last few decades has even turned neighboring Virginia into a reliable blue state.

It should almost be an axiom that the more people talk about diversity and inclusion, the less they actually believe in it, or really practice what they preach. 

My local newspaper, like most media outlets, is a champion of diversity but its columnists and editorialists all believe the same thing despite differences in color, gender and sexual orientation. No conservative columnist need apply for inclusion. Conservative op-eds and letters rarely appear. Even the dog columnist disliked Trump. Of course, the cartoons, political and otherwise, are invariably left leaning.

Since the election diversity politics has gone a step further. It is no longer enough to censor or suppress dissenting opinions, they must also be branded as dangerous and even criminal. It is now virtually forbidden to investigate charges of fraud in the last election. To even question the official party line is to be branded a right-wing extremist. 

Democrats routinely claim that the country is racist, and sexist, but the diversity movement has become a shield behind which many liberals and progressives hide their own brand of those social ills.

Supreme Court Justice Thomas is a black man but because of his conservatism, he is the wrong kind of black man in the eyes of liberals and progressives. President Biden (Ole White Joe) uttered the most racist remark in the last election, but he got a pass. Remember when he told blacks in South Carolina that if they didn’t vote for him, “they ain’t black.” After all his years in politics, or perhaps because of that, he still does not believe blacks can think for themselves.

Women have made great strides toward equality in the past few decades, but why are only certain types of women eligible for inclusion in the Democratic party, or in the mainstream media? Pro-life women like Amy Coney Barrett are not welcome. Despite their credentials and experience, they hit the glass ceiling. They must be pro-choice, but certainly not pro-school choice like Betsy De Vos. 

There will be little difference of opinion in the Biden cabinet or administration. All of its members, no matter their gender, color, sexual orientation, or whatever,  belong to the “governing class.”

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A Fine Romance

My wife Linda and I celebrate our 58^th wedding anniversary today. We were married at St. John the Evangelist Catholic church in White Plains, NY on February 9, 1963. 

We originally met about two years before on a blind date. I was a senior at Fordham College in the Bronx thinking of going on to graduate school to study and eventually teach History. She was a nursing student at Cornell University on pace to get her BSRN the next year.

Both of us were unattached. I had broken off with a girl I had dated for months and wondered if I would ever find the right girl. She had also parted ways with a recent boyfriend. I guess that is why a friend of mine at school asked his girlfriend at the nursing school to find me a date so that the four of us could attend the annual Fordham glee club concert.

Maybe because I was Italian, his girlfriend thought of Linda Gardella. When she couldn’t find her, she asked a friend of Linda’s if she thought Linda would be interested. “Of course,” she answered without bothering to even ask her. Linda was a little upset but did agree to go. I guess that’s how fate operates.

Anyway, in those days men were not allowed entrance to the nurses’ quarters. I had to give my name to a receptionist who would let Linda know I was there to pick her up. On this occasion she was already ready in the lounge, a kind of waiting room. I can still see her now. I don’t know if it was love at first sight but not only was I struck by how beautiful she was, but by how mature she seemed to be. 

I think the first date was kind of a flop. The glee club concert was a major affair for the school and held every year at New York’s City Center, not far from the nursing center on the East Side. The concert was on Friday evening, March 3, but even though the chorale was premiering a new piece, the only thing I remember was that Linda fell asleep during the concert. In those days nursing students actually worked in the hospital wards and she had had a busy day. I don’t recall how we got back to the nursing center. I dropped her off and that was it. There was no holding hands or good night kiss.

Nevertheless, it was a start and despite my shyness, I got up the nerve to call her up and ask for another date.

As an aside, there were no cell phones in those days. There wasn’t even a phone in my grandparents’ home where I lived. I used pay phone booths that could be found on street corners. Any fan of Superman will be familiar with them.

She agreed to go out with me again and we began to date. In those days New York City was a wonderful place for a budding romance. Quiet bars (the drinking age was 18), coffee shops, and neighborhood restaurants were everywhere. Movie houses, theaters, and concert halls were nearby, and inexpensive. You could get seats for a Broadway play for less than $20 and half price tickets were readily available to students. Central Park was a short walk from the nursing center, and the lovely East River walk was around the corner.

In that beautiful spring of 1961, we held hands for the first time while watching “The Days of Thrills and Laughter” at a local movie house. We kissed for the first time one night in Central Park by the Lake. I had certainly fallen for her, and unbeknownst to me, she told her mother that she would probably marry me. 

Nevertheless, when summer vacation came, she went back to White Plains and while she didn’t exactly break it off, she went incommunicado. I’m still not sure of the reason. I was so despondent that I even grew a beard. 

After a couple of months, I was finally able to get through to her and she agreed to see me again. Persistence paid off. Of all places, I took her to Belmont Park, one of New York’s premier racetracks. Guys in my neighborhood in Queens loved the races, and I had become a little bit of a fan myself. Fate took a hand again. I had a couple of winners and was able to take her out to dinner at a nice restaurant back in White Plains.

After that we were a couple. I guess all she needed was time and space to make up her mind. In the meantime, I had graduated from Fordham, and had been accepted in the graduate program at Columbia University. She still had a year to go in nursing school. We dated regularly, wrote incessant love letters which she recently burned, and began to plan for the future.

 Shortly after she graduated in 1962, I proposed and she accepted. Of course, I went through the formality of getting her father’s permission. By then he knew I was not really a gambler. Years before, in Catholic elementary school the nuns had us open up a savings account with a local bank. I think we would deposit a nickel every week. In 1962 I took the little more than $200 life savings that I had in the account and bought a diamond engagement ring from a jeweler in New York’s Diamond district on 47th Street. Maybe, I got taken but she still wears it 58 years later.

It has been, and still is “a fine romance.”

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Fossil Fuel Fan *

  

                                          

Yesterday, we had a major snowstorm here in Connecticut. Nevertheless, my wife and I spent a comfortable day at home, snug and warm. We just had to press a button and our energy efficient oil burner worked like a charm. Thankfully, we did not lose electric power despite the winds. Fossil fuels provide most of the electric company's energy. Solar and wind would never have been able to keep us warm during this storm.

Almost immediately on taking office, new President Joe Biden used an executive order to put a stop to the construction of the Keystone pipeline that would transport Canadian crude oil to American refineries.  With another executive order, he put a hold on fracking on Federal lands. The President did not bother to consult Congress in issuing these orders. It seems obvious that he and his handlers are out to put an end to the use of fossil fuels in America. Aside from the fact that his actions put many people out of work, they will also increase energy costs for everyone. We have an energy system that works, and he wants to fix it.

I have to admit that I like fossil fuels and feel extremely grateful that I have lived my entire life as a beneficiary of their use. I can hardly imagine what life would have been like without them. The modern world that we know would have been impossible without fossil fuels and the related industries that enabled us to use them. Let me offer a couple of examples that might shed light on my affection.

I recently watched John Huston’s 1956 film version of Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick. I first saw the film when I was a teenager, and I now consider it an “iconic” film because I can still remember even minor characters and scenes with great vividness. The film had a great director, a fine cast, and awesome cinema effects for the time.

It is a magnificent film but somewhat hard to watch today because of the whale hunting scenes. Since 1956 the advent of television and innumerable nature shows have sensitized us to the killing of animals especially whales. We might feel differently, however, if we had lived 200 years ago in what was a veritable dark age.

Back then whales, especially sperm whales, were hunted not for sport or food but for their oil. The oil was used to light the lamps that did a much better job of illuminating homes than candles. Before that time, you were basically in the dark when the sun went down. Just consider what it is like when we have a power outage today and have to rely on candles for light. It’s doable but hard to endure for more than an hour or two.

Fortunately, the discovery and use of underground oil in the nineteenth century was a tremendous improvement in home lighting. The subsequent harnessing of electricity finally took us into the modern world. We no longer had to kill whales and that industry is virtually banned today.

When I was a child in the 1940s, I still remember watching with fascination as the coal delivery truck emptied a load of coal through a small basement window into a room size coal bin. We loved the coal and never considered that the dust stirred up in delivery might be harmful. I can remember my father or mother going down into the basement on winter mornings to shovel some coal from the bin into the burner. It was hard work, but it heated our home beautifully.  

We lived in a crowded borough of New York city and there was no way we could have heated our homes with wood. Actually, the advent of coal meant that just as we no longer had to kill whales, we no longer had to chop down forests.

Eventually, oil derived from petroleum replaced coal in our household. What a blessing!  No more shoveling, no more messy coal bin, and no more ashes to discard. You just had to turn up the thermostat every morning and the heat came up. Eventually the coal trucks disappeared from our streets. 

Nevertheless, fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas still play a major role in our energy system. Even green power advocates still use them for heat and light as well as to power up their cell phones every night, and charge up the batteries of their hybrid and electric vehicles. Where do they think the power comes from?

Maybe the day will come when alternative and renewable sources make it no longer necessary to use oil and natural gas. If it does come, I don’t think it will have anything to do with climate change.

Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick in 1850, and oil began to replace coal in homes around 1950. I won’t live to see it, but I suspect that by 2050 human ingenuity and technology will have found cost-effective ways to heat and light our homes even without government laws and subsidies. A friend of mine, who is an expert on the matter, tells me that biofuels (but not ethanol) are the wave of the future. 

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* This post originally appeared on the Weekly Bystander a couple of years ago. I repeat it here with an introduction in response to the President's executive orders.