Inside from the Inside

“Why does Rice play Texas?”

- President John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962

Do what is right because it is right – sometimes.  That’s on a personal level.  At a group level, it happens a little less frequently.  As a society, it’s getting pretty tough to pull off [unless there's a related benefit to be realized], and at the governmental level, forget it.

When an individual, or an entity, possesses something that a less-powerful individual or group desires, it will not willingly relinquish that thing for the sake of goodness or equality, no matter how the thing was acquired in the first place.  Don’t believe me?  Ask a Palestinian in Gaza.  Or an Indian on the subcontinent prior to August 15, 1947.  Or a third-world country trying to keep Coca Cola from using up so much of that country’s preciously limited supply in order to bottle and sell as much Coke as it can.

The individual can be persuaded with appeals to emotion or sometimes logic; not so in the case of the state.  It must be forcibly coerced to abide, with that force coming in the form of either economic advantage or physical force.  The North did not march into the South to enforce the freedom of slaves until it was forced to do so by the South seceding from the Union.  The British did not reliquish control of India until forced to do so by millions of Indians rebelling economically, and state-sanctioned separate but equal did not end until forced to do so by the Supreme Court, nicely backed up by the armed forces of the United States.

Racism at an individual level will not end; individuals have free will, and can choose to exercise their freedom through the choices they make.  There can be consequences, but the freedom is there.  The state, on the other hand, does not have free will.  It must abide by laws that it sets forth for itself.  Until there are laws for the country, for corporations, and other institutions and entities to force the end of racism at those levels, it will not end at those levels.

Problem:  a law can’t be drafted and debated and passed unless we know what, exactly, we’re trying to enforce or enact.  In Palestine, EVERYONE knows there’s a problem, and there are lots of solutions proposed by many different entities; their issue is one of negotiation and settlement.  In India, EVERYONE knew there was a problem; in that case, the issue was that Great Britain didn’t want to give up economic power, regardless of how illicitly it had been achieved (as was the case in the American South with slavery).  In America today though, SOME know there is a problem, some THINK there MIGHT be a problem, and most believe that there is NO problem.  Now THAT’S a problem.

And for those too lazy or unwilling to click on the entire JFK speech text link above, here’s an expanded excerpt of that awesome speech to kick the space race into high gear, delivered at Rice University in Houston:

But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon… (interrupted by applause) we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Tags: Indian independence, JFK Rice speech, Palestine