Glenden BrownIn praise of historical memory
Historical memory is both individual and community based. Historical memory is nothing more than knowing where we as a community come from, what we’ve done before, what we’ve learned from that doing. Historical memory is also personal – the story of our families and how they fit into history.
My great aunts – Effie, Alice and Evelyn – were born and raised in Utah, all three graduated from the University of Utah before 1925. Effie was a teacher her entire life, owner her own home, traveled with friends, never married. Alice did marry but had no children; she lived in Washington DC, earned a PhD and was for a time the highest ranking woman in the US State Department; she addressed both Congress and the UN and lived near embasy row in the DC. She retired to Utah, where she lived until her death in the early 1990’s. Great Aunt Evelyn was the first person who told me, unequivocally, “Get as well-educated as you possibly can and you will never regret it.â€Â Evelyn had a master’s degree (and told me that the men in the law school were such sexists that she didn’t go and she still regretted not facing them down); by her account, she was the first woman bank Vice President in Utah. There’s nothing radical about women holding jobs, getting professional degrees, choosing to not marry or to not have children. Conservatives today can be counted on to get the vapors at the idea of couples choosing not to have children, or people choosing not to marry.
Utah granted women the right to vote in 1890; it was considered a liberal, even a radical act. Conservatives argued that allowing women to vote would destroy America. You might find someone willing to argue women shouldn’t have the right to vote, but they are dismissed as crackpots and lunatics.
At the time of the Civil Rights movement, white America’s racism was so entrenched it was considered radical for African-Americans to demand equal treatment and equal rights as white Americans. Conservatives argued African-Americans were inherently inferior and that granting African-Americans the same rights as whites would destroy society. Today, those views are largely relegated to the hate-filled margins of society. There was a time not so many years ago that the Mormon Church did not allow African-Americans to hold the priesthood. That has changed.
I personally know an interracial couple who were denied the right to legally marry less than forty years ago. Conservatives argued bi-racial couples should be allowed to marry. Today, what reasonable person argues against interracial marriage?
My grandmother was the first member of her family born in the United States, the 12th of 13 children of immigrants from England. Her father was a day laborer form the day he arrived in the US in the 1890s until he was literally too old to work anymore. My grandmother once “borrowed†his bicycle to ride downtown and see a movie. The bike was hit by a car and he walked to work every day for 18 months until he saved up enough money to buy a new bike. At the time, they were considered “good†immigrants because they spoke English, unlike the immigrants from other parts of Europe. At one time, many cities in the coal mining and industrial regions of the northeast had signs in both English and Croat, or English and Czech, or English and Italian and social conservatives were scandalized by those signs.
Today’s immigrants are no different than my great-grandparents – they want their children to have a better life and they will work any job they can get to make that possible. And their kids are growing up American. It’s time to get past our prejudices and realize that today’s conventional wisdom was yesterday’s radical new idea, today’s newcomer will be integrated into the mainstream tomorrow.
The only constants seem to be change and the people who argue the world will end if we change. There is not a single important social advance in American history that liberals haven’t championed and conservative haven’t opposed. Historical memory - knowing that conservatives have yet to be right in American history - makes me proud to call myself a liberal.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Great post Glen.
I can’t wait for the day when it will be considered unthinkable to discriminate against any group for any reason. They trend the last 100 years or so has been in that direction, and we are currently witnessing the death throes of the conservatives desperately trying to prevent the human evolution to understanding and tolerance that we are slowly but surely getting to.
October 26th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Jenni - thank, I’ve been pondering this for a while. I’m still not pithy like atrios, but give me time . . . I hope.