Yesterday, Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times, that with the election of Barak H. Obama, the American Civil War is now over. If only this were true.
On April 15, 1865 the Army of Virginia surrendered to the Army of the Potomac which ended most of the fighting of the American Civil War. Americans thought the Civil War was over. In a few days General Johnson surrendered to General Sherman and except for some Confederate cavalry officers who wanted to continue a guerilla war with the North that finished all of the fighting. Americans thought the Civil War was over.
About two decades later a meeting of the soldiers of both the North and South returned to the plains of an old battlefield. Each stood in the positions they held at that time and when the call for attack was raised they ran across the field of death and hugged each other. America thought the Civil War was over.
In the early 1950’s when the Supreme Court, in effect, overturned the Jim Crow laws of the South, Americans thought the Civil War was over. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed protecting minorities, including African-Americans, from discrimination in the work place. Americans thought the Civil War was over.
In 1965 President Johnson commenced the War on Poverty, to address the economic problems, among others, in the African-American community. Americans thought the Civil War was over. And in 2008 America elected its first African-American as President of the United States. And Thomas Friedman thinks the American Civil War is over.
Well it isn’t, and it never will be in anyone’s lifetime living today.
Obama claimed during the campaign that he was a post-partisan candidate. He isn’t even a post-racial candidate. The problems of race are both deep and wide, not only in America but throughout Europe and Asia. It’s in our DNA as humans and it is not in our destiny to have it removed by analysis, pschyo-analysis or ratiocination.
We are a condemned species. But there is hope because we, as humans, are more than our DNA. Millions of Americans did not vote for Obama because he is black but in spite of it. And there lay the true audacity of hope.
To President Obama, though I disagree with you with respect to nearly every matter facing this beloved nation, I wish you well and great fortune. Your fortune is now tied to every American and every person clamoring for freedom throughout the world. But I know, even for you, the American Civil War is not over…
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