The Rosa Parks Bill

(originally published April 18th, 2006)

I can’t even repeat my first thoughts from earlier today when I heard that the Alabama legislature had given final approval to a bill, called “The Rose Parks Bill”, that sets up a process to “pardon” Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr, and others who had been convicted of violating segregation-era laws. Even though it passed 91-0, the idea that someone decided they needed to be pardoned from charges that were overturned when those laws were considered unconstitutional just sits badly with me.

Jared Enos via Compfight

It made me think back to two things that, on the surface, have little to do with each other. One is that we had the 38th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, on April 4th, and it pretty much passed without any fanfare. Then this past Sunday, on the Cartoon Network, the episode of Boondocks had a scenario where Martin Luther King, Jr, awoke from a coma after 38 years and had to learn how to live in a world that certainly wasn’t what he thought it would be when he was crusading for equal rights.

Sure, many things have gotten better, but many other things have gotten much worse. In this same two week time period, we’ve been brought up close and personal to the class differences highlighted by race in the sexual assault investigation at Duke University in North Carolina, and we’ve had to deal with the ramifications of the so-called Immigration Bill that is or isn’t a good thing, depending on who you ask.

What’s still missing, in my opinion, is a true dialogue of issues, cultural and personal. I heard from a friend of my wife’s about her latest encounter with a sales cleck who was told to follow her around the store, only to cry and say she was going to tell her manager when confronted about it, because we always know when we’re being followed. I mention it to someone else and I get “Maybe they thought she was acting suspicious”; please! Until we acknowledge that there’s still a ways to go, and we openly talk about it some more, we’re going to continue dealing with empty gestures meant to appease someone’s guilt rather than help situations across the board become better.