History repeating

As the Spanish poet and philosopher George Santayana so eloquently put it, “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” 

Our country’s checkered history of racism, segregation and discrimination is something many of us would rather forget. And that’s a big part of why we aren’t making enough progress towards building a more just and equal society.

{mosads}A quick glance through the headlines will produce far too many examples of our stagnation in healing the wounds of racism, segregation and discrimination:

Laws passed to intentionally keep minority citizens out of the voting booth. A couple in love being denied a fundamental right to marry because of who they are. Police assaulting and killing unarmed black men in their custody. 

Sadly, these aren’t stories from a bygone era. They’re happening today, across the country. Take dates out of the picture, and the shameful stories of segregation and civil rights violations that many Millennials grew up hearing in history class are eerily similar to what’s happening in our country today.

The Red Summer of 1919 was marred by race riots instigated by discriminatory police practices. In Chicago, racial tensions came to a boil when a white man killed a black man in front of witnesses and a white police officer refused to arrest him. Jump to the 1960’s when police officers regularly targeted black men and women fighting for justice during the civil rights movement, from Birmingham to the Selma marches. The riots that erupted in 1992 following the acquittals of four police officers who had been filmed beating Rodney King are etched in my memory and in the memories of many of my peers. And most recently, the country has again been reminded that racial inequality is not a thing of the past, in the controversies surrounding police tactics used against Michael Brown in Ferguson, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and Eric Garner in New York.

Whether in Baltimore in 2015, Los Angeles in 1992, or Chicago 95 years ago, any of these incidents and the subsequent protests could easily have used the slogan “Black Lives Matter.”

While it took protests and debates over police tactics to thrust race relations back onto the front pages, quieter attacks on equal rights have been taking place for years. Legislatures have time and again found ways to exclude minorities from a fundamental American right – the right to vote. The recent passage of stringent voter ID laws across the country threatens to rebuild barriers to the voting booth that took Americans over 100 years to tear down. A federal judge struck down Texas’s strict voter ID law, finding it was an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote that purposely discriminated against minority voters and was, essentially, a poll tax. That decision is being appealed by those who want to limit voting rights while similar challenges to voter ID laws make their way through the courts, including in my home state of North Carolina.

Millennials are often are portrayed by popular media as perhaps the most open and accepting of all generations. But there’s plenty of evidence that many aren’t getting the message. Earlier this year University of Oklahoma students, members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, were filmed singing a racist song that included a joke about lynching. There’s a temptation to dismiss incidents like this as silly pranks or youthful indiscretions, but we need to remember that today’s college students are tomorrow’s CEOs, government leaders, and parents. If they maintain this destructive attitude, it will spread into our workplaces and collective communities of tomorrow, passing damaging biases on to future generations.  

The struggle for marriage equality is perhaps the civil right issue that’s most closely associated with my generation, and it’s one where we’ve seen some recent progress. Keep in mind that it wasn’t until Mildred Loving’s historic victory in Loving v. Virginia (1967) that all state laws prohibiting interracial marriage were invalidated. Mildred, a black woman, and her husband, Richard, a white man, had been sentenced to prison simply for marrying each other. Their case has often been cited in the ongoing fight for marriage equality. Since then, marriage equality for same sex couples has made massive strides. Since Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004, 34 states and Washington, D.C. have joined the club; meaning 70 percent of the U.S. population lives in jurisdictions where same sex couples can legally marry.

However, uncertainty still remains, and the Supreme Court is faced with defining what marriage really means and whether same-sex couples enjoy the fundamental right to marry the person they love. We should be able to count on our court system to protect our civil rights, including the right to marry whomever you love, whether straight, gay, black or white. I believe Mildred Loving, said it best: “I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”  

We can do better. With renewed urgency, and with these images of injustice present in our hearts and minds, we must push for change. We can — and must — learn from the dark parts of our collective history. And ultimately, it’s up to us — not the government, not the courts — to have the difficult discussions necessary to change our own behavior and take real steps toward undoing the mistakes of the past.

The Millennial Generation will play a critical role in writing a new history. I invite you to join me, community activists and journalists, on June 15 as part of Millennial Week here in Washington, D.C., for a discussion about Millennials, Diversity and America — and how this generation of young adults can lead the way to social change and a brighter future.

The daughter of former Sen. John Edwards and Elizabeth Edwards, Cate Edwards is the managing attorney of the Washington, D.C. office of Edwards Kirby, LLP.