When The Revolution Ends

I wrote about this recently in a comment on another blog. If someone reads both, and finds me redundant, I apologize. The thought however is sort of back there and I think I shall put it here and see what it becomes.

I am one of the few remaining folk singers. Our ranks, so large before the Beatles invasion, continue to thin. But I am one who is still around, certainly not a star, but still ‘pickin and singin.’ I still perform ‘protest songs.’ Some date back before the civil war and others that arose in the civil rights movement. All are seldom heard these days.

I began when I read something on Rev. Elizabeth’s blog to think about how the silencing of these songs might relate to something, she, I and others have noticed. Young women, are dismissive, when they are not unaware of, the process that brought them the (near) equality they enjoy. One can observe something of the same dismissal among young Black people.

What is happening here? I think I may know, and if I do, the answer is rather conservative.

One of the things we civil rights folks and the subsequent feminists fought for was opening up closed systems. This took the form, among other things of access laws, and this is key, of ‘afirmative action.’ At the time, some of us (moi) argued that quotas, affirmative action etc were bad ideas. We said that they masked the real accomplishments of the liberated. I think we are being proved correct.

I know blacks and women who have achieved a lot, and who will deny without it being suggested that they are ‘militant’ or ‘feminist.’ I don’t think they are as the really silly comments from the likes of Al Sharpton would suggest, caving into the white establishment. Rather, I think they are saying “I actually achieved this! It was not the gift of liberal guilt or affirmative action.”

So, suddenly, remembering the struggle is attached, at least in some sense to the social engineering that came after. And that is why no one wants to recall it. Or so I think.

The problems then is not that we fought, it is how we won.