At an age, when one looks back, in addition to looking at the future, it is clear to me that we, as a region and a nation, are faced with difficulties that have helped to create troubling turbulence, but these problems are not insurmountable. It does, however, mean that it is important that we all accept responsibility, in some way, to address these problems squarely and with urgency. If not, they will continue as an existential threat to a more bountiful future for our region.
We live in a rapidly changing and increasingly interconnected world with daunting challenges created by the inexorable forces of globalization, technology and shifting demographics. The consequences of our failure to address aggressively the challenges created by these changes could be dire for this region.
I am feeling nostalgic and wish I could share more about the many decades I have spent in St. Louis – to speak more about the St. Louis region where I have lived much of my adult life and, along with their mother, raised our children. These years were in sharp contrast to my formative years, which were spent in a small, smoky, blue-collar town outside Chicago in an age of overt racial segregation, but where, nevertheless, I was able to attend racially, ethnically and economically diverse public schools.
My brief time to speak also does not allow for discussion of the many great cultural amenities and exceptional educational, philanthropic and private-sector assets we have in St. Louis and why our region is actually poised for more vibrant future growth. So that my remarks will be brief, I will address a very specific area of concern and its broad implications that threaten to undermine our future success and cannot continue to be ignored: racial injustice and its entrenched and crippling impact on our community.
As an African American receiving an award named for Thomas Jefferson, I want to comment on the ongoing controversy around this esteemed, but complicated, co-founder of the nation, who was the principle author of the Declaration of Independence and the third (and one of the greatest) presidents in the history of the United States. This extraordinary man’s accomplishments as president are well known here in St. Louis, notably the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 that almost doubled the size of the United States, and the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Far West. He was the intellectual architect of the nation’s highest ideals. He will always belong in the American pantheon.
However, his life and times lead me to reflect on three kinds of history and their impact on public policy: what actually happened, what we are told happened, and what we come to believe happened. An informed understanding of history is especially important now because of our nation’s current heated political climate.
Apparently, what people believe happened is all that seems to matter for a great number of our citizens. An opinion-based history of the Civil War was recently espoused by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired four-star U.S. Marine general – basically he offered, from his high office, a rationale for the Lost Cause of the Confederacy movement.
Meanwhile, Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman has affirmed that while Jefferson, a founder of the U.S. Constitution, wrote that “all men are created equal,” he believed Africans were inferior and fathered children with an enslaved woman. But his colleague and contemporary, Alexander Hamilton – himself a distinguished co-founder of the U.S. Constitution – genuinely rejected the idea of racial inferiority and insisted that enslaved Africans were entitled to a right to liberty.
Yet even Hamilton felt he could not, at the time, afford to free his own slaves in his will. This contradiction resonates with our current situation. America, at its best, has repeatedly aspired to establish racial equality in the face of slavery and segregation. Yet, the need to accommodate the realities of economics, politics and the prejudice of others – which is to say, the difficulty even well-intentioned people can have in accepting the true cost of meaningful change – has continued to hold back racial equality.
Granted, many have enjoyed the benefits of some very significant advances in race relations, but what is disturbing is that currently our segmented society is being torn even further apart. Race is being exploited by some duplicitous politicians as a leverage point to rouse a dissatisfied and disaffected working class.
Conservative columnist David Brooks warns that “a new culture will have to be built, new values promulgated and a new social fabric will have to be woven, one that brings us into a better relationship with each other.” That is work that sorely needs to be done to embrace a better vision for America.
We will not succeed as a region without forward-thinking, informed, prudent, but bold, leadership from all sectors of our community. Philosopher Edmund Burke famously wrote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men” – and, I would add women – “to do nothing.”
Edited from remarks given on Thursday, November 9, in accepting the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Award from the Missouri Historical Society at the Missouri History Museum.
