On Jan. 9, the University of Georgia paused to reflect on the 50th anniversary of its desegregation. Some wrote about this event as a celebration of courage while others reminded us of our unfortunate past and of ongoing challenges. Some historic black-and-white film footage, taken in 1961, caught my attention.
The footage was taken the very day Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes arrived to register for classes at UGA. Aside from capturing the youthful and determined faces of Hunter-Gault and Holmes, the film also captured — in perpetuity — the youthful and enraged faces of protesters who had gathered en masse to their admission. The protesters opposed them with the angry conviction that “morality cannot be legislated.” This young, intelligent generation of 1960s Georgians believed with rigid certainty that integration was a degradation of their personal constitutional rights.
While the film is now 50 years old, the protesters looked strangely familiar and contemporary. It occurred to me that I might know some of them personally. Today these individuals would be in their late 60s. Surely most still live in Georgia and could have children or grandchildren attending fully integrated classes at UGA. As I watched the film, I wondered if any of these protesters had any regrets.
I don’t know where we will be in 50 years, but I hope that the dreaded illegal alien issue that produces so much anger today will be legislatively resolved by the federal government and disappear over time. If history is prologue, the divisions of our time will be replaced with moderation, progress and maybe even celebrations where former adversaries will take the podium and reflect on times gone by as they did at UGA in January.
If you follow our state’s demographics, these celebrations may be around the corner. By 2022, more than 24 percent of the students eligible for admission to our colleges will be Hispanic. The Asian population, both native and foreign-born, will be a substantial minority. The probability that children of immigrants will marry the ancestors of Jefferson Davis will be part of a new Southern tradition. We will live in an era of hyphenated names that join Sanchez with Harris and Wu with Smith. Relationships will turn fear into acceptance, misunderstanding into family narrative and everyone into football fans. At a minimum, the rants of 2011 will sound caustic and hard to imagine.
I am not alone in thinking about our future and the consequences of extremes. During the last election, outgoing Gov. Sonny Perdue urged his colleagues to tone down the immigration rhetoric. In a reflective, nonpolitical moment, the man who was free to speak his mind cautioned his peers because he knows our history and he knows that words and deeds can haunt us both individually and as a state.
I know and respect many members of the General Assembly personally and I share their long-standing frustration with the failure of the federal government to resolve the immigration issue. But we must heed Perdue’s warning.
Extreme views, words and actions will only lead to our state being compared to Arizona, which has suffered both economically and socially by overreaching on immigration. We should not aspire to compete with Arizona for the pole position in extreme legislation. We have more to lose, and we are smarter than that.
If the 1961 film does anything, it reminds us that things change, and even anger and what appears to be an impossible situation can give rise to celebration. A few years from now, I am hopeful that we will look back on 2011 with no regrets.
Sam Zamarripa, a former state legislator, owns a private equity firm.
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