You could not miss the juxtaposition on Friday.
In Washington, on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, a crowd of gay couples celebrated their victory by singing the national anthem. President Barack Obama added to the occasion with some brief Rose Garden remarks.
“We’ve made real progress in advancing equality for LGBT Americans in ways that were unimaginable not too long ago,” the president said. “America should be very proud.”
And then Obama boarded Air Force One for the flight to Charleston, S.C., to deliver the eulogy for Clementa Pinckney, a state senator and pastor of the Emanuel AME Church – one of nine black church members cut down by the young white man who dreamed of a re-segregated America.
“He surely sensed the meaning of his violent act. It was an act that drew on a long history of bombs, and arsons, and shots fired at these churches,” the president said over Pinckney’s casket. “It was an act that he imagined would incite fear, and incrimination, violence and suspicion. An act he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation’s original sin.”
The Supreme Court decision to strike down state bans against gay marriage, including Georgia’s, was driven by a remarkable shift in public opinion over mere decades. In 2004, 76 percent of Georgia voters endorsed a ban on same-sex unions. The latest national poll by Gallup, taken in May, says 60 percent of Americans now support gay marriage.
When Obama described the Supreme Court decision as a “thunderbolt,” little exaggeration was involved.
At the same time, Charleston is proof that America remains mired in a 400-year discussion about race that isn’t close to ending. Two streams of black outrage have merged in South Carolina, where the white cop accused of shooting Walter Scott in the back as he fled last April sits in a cell adjoining the young man who used a .45 to blaspheme within the sanctuary of Mother Emanuel.
Even before Ferguson, Mo., one Gallup poll had 53 percent of African-Americans in the U.S. in favor of new civil rights protections. Only 17 percent of whites felt the same.
America has shifted off one dime, but not another. Why? One was a revolution from within. The other remains a clash of strangers. Us versus them.
I caught Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, only a few hours after the Supreme Court decision. His high-fiving wouldn’t be taking a break for several days, but he acknowledged that Charleston had cast a shadow across an otherwise happy weekend.
He explained the shift in public attitude toward gay marriage this way: “We are born into all families, and often into families that had been opposed to gay marriage. We’re sons, daughters, brothers, sisters.” Blood is thicker than political opinions.
Even the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of the U.S. military, established during the 1990s, permitted the rubbing of elbows between straights and gays, knocking down walls of suspicions, he said.
Last February, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave an interview to the Bloomberg syndicate in which she nearly prophesied Friday’s bipolar nature.
With homosexuality, she said, “we discovered it’s our next-door neighbor — we’re very fond of them. Or it’s our child’s best friend, or even our child. I think that as more and more people came out and said that ‘this is who I am,’ then the rest of us recognized that they are one of us,” Ginsburg said.
“There was a familiarity with people that didn’t exist in the beginning when the race problem was on the front burner, because we lived in segregated communities and it was truly a ‘we-they’ kind of thing,” she said.
What happened in Charleston was precisely a “we-they” kind of thing. “You’re raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go,” the 21-year-old shooter told the Emanuel AME prayer group before he shot them.
It was an act of violence that might have happened in 1955. Or 1968. “What he did was an act of racism. And it was the worst act of racism in the 21st century, the worst act that I’ve seen in my 37 years,” said Tharon Johnson, a Democratic strategist in Atlanta.
Johnson said the killing of the Emanuel Nine was proof that the country has yet to have that honest, soul-bearing conversation about race that we always promise to have with ourselves. But he does not know how it will happen. Obama seemed to be of the same mind in Charleston.
“To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change — that’s how we lose our way again,” the president said.
Leo Smith is Johnson’s counterpart on the Republican side. He is African-American and in charge of minority recruitment for the Georgia GOP.
“There’s a lot to be learned from the lobbying activity of the gay community and their organizations. They’re a smaller percentage of the American populace, yet they’re garnering a lot of attention, and they’re garnering a lot of political power – even in the city of Atlanta,” Smith said. He senses some dissatisfaction.
“When you look at [the Democratic] website, there’s more stuff about LGBT stuff than there is about civil rights. Black people are beginning to feel that our issues are being subjugated to other rights efforts. No one ever finishes the job with us,” he said. “It seems as if we push through the wall, but a lot of people jump in and ride on our backs.”
But there are others who think that what happened in Washington and what happened in Charleston on Friday isn’t a zero-sum contest.
Michael Thurmond, the former state labor commissioner, wraps up his stint as DeKalb County school superintendent this week. An African-American, Thurmond noted that President Barack Obama was far from the only political leader at Pinckney’s funeral.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, led a delegation of members of Congress. U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga, attended as well. Gov. Nikki Haley is leading the fight to remove the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s capitol grounds. So the us-them wall is showing signs of crumbling, even if it hasn’t fallen, Thurmond said.
And as far as the U.S. Supreme Court decision on gay marriage was concerned, Thurmond labeled that a victory for human rights. And thus a victory for African-Americans.
“Now it’s not just about race. And that’s what Dr. King hoped for.”
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