What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the Sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the “ape” in apricot? What have they got that I ain’t got? Courage!The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz
If you’re looking for a rewarding entertainment experience, go see The Help. The movie version of Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel is filled with vivid characters and touching performances. It’s also a discomforting look at the ways that slavery cast its dark shadow into modern times, particularly in the Deep South.
But most compellingly, it’s a reminder that history is propelled by individual acts of courage. And that our lives and our politics are in many ways defined by such acts.
In The Help, maids in Jackson, Mississippi risk their livelihoods to share their experience in a dehumanizing system of domestic servitude. But as the movie makes clear, the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s was a huge cultural test of courage. Tens of thousands passed with flying colors, to their credit and our benefit.
From Casablanca to The King’s Speech, the most memorable movies pivot on tests of character and courage. They are inspiring but also unsettling, especially when rooted in reality, because are drawn to consider how we would fare if tested in the same way. Would we have sued our employer and subjected ourselves to public derision like Andrew Beckett, the Tom Hanks’ character in Philadelphia? Would we have risked everything to rescue Jews from concentration camps like Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List?
Most of us have evidence to the contrary.
I was tested early, at age 6 or 7, when my father and older brother teased me for dressing Barbie dolls with my two best friends, girls my age who lived next door on both sides. Even then I sensed vulnerability and went crying to my mom. She asked which was more important: what I thought, or what my father and brother thought. I recall thinking for a very long time before deciding that their opinion mattered most. I stopped playing with dolls, and soon stopped playing with my girl friends altogether.
Vulnerability played a role in another test of moral courage, this time while I was in college. As pledge trainer, I objected to demeaning and sadistic hazing techniques that were part of my fraternity’s lore. A junior by then, I also worried that some of my fraternity brothers suspected I was gay. I didn’t want the spotlight, and my concerns went unvoiced.
I’ve also done courageous things. I stood by an obese friend who was bullied mercilessly in elementary school. I started an LGBT newspaper back when businesses scoffed at the prospect of advertising. I’ve asked tough questions in interviews with elected officials and other notables.
And of course, like all of you, I came out; an ongoing process that I thought had gotten easier until last weekend, when at the behest of their parents I had the talk with my incredulous 11-year-old twin niece and nephew.
But even since coming out and founding Watermark, my politics have, in retrospect, too often been timid. I was late to insist that transgenders be included in nondiscrimination protections, fearing that would be unpalatable to mainstream voters. For a time I suggested we make civil unions our goal in Florida because same-sex marriage was unattainable. And back in 2003, I lazily tempered my outrage at the unwarranted American invasion of Iraq. It was a turning point for our country, resulting in the killing of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, and we should have taken to the streets in protest.
I so admire my friend Nadine Smith, the founder and executive director of Equality Florida, who sees civil rights with a single-minded clarity that can be intimidating. People like Nadine and Harvey Milk, and Martin Luther King, and Ghandi are like a relentless conscience, battling against the inclination toward laziness, compromise and conflict-avoidance. Their clarity is their courage.
Right now, our nation’s greatest injustices are economic. One in seven Americans uses food stamps. Wealth has shifted dramatically to a very small percentage of the population. Money to fund tax cuts and increased government spending including two ill-advised wars was borrowed. To pay back the resulting debt, the architects of this grand plan now want to decimate our future by slashing spending on education, infrastructure, health care and social supports.
And they blame the current administration for the problem.
President Barack Obama is process-oriented by nature. He gravitates toward conciliation and compromise; not a bad thing in certain circumstances, and something with which I can certainly identify. As the first African American president, he may also feel vulnerable to unwarranted charges that he does not represent mainstream America.
Fresh off the horrific debt ceiling debate, and with an election campaign gearing up, now is not the time for conciliation. If he is to lead us out of this troubling economic reordering, President Obama must find the clarity of a civil rights activist, and the courage to articulate and act on it.
