Guess Who’s Coming to the White House
When you’re 27, you sometimes feel that things that seem very present to many people in the political world — the 1994 midterms, say — are like ancient history. But by the same token, Frank Rich’s column reminds us that some aspects of the American experience that are treated as ancient history actually happened quite recently — within the lifetimes of most people:
And so: just how far have we come?
As a rough gauge last week, I watched a movie I hadn’t seen since it came out when I was a teenager in 1967. Back then “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” was Hollywood’s idea of a stirring call for racial justice. The premise: A young white woman falls madly in love with a black man while visiting the University of Hawaii and brings him home to San Francisco to get her parents’ blessing. Dad, a crusading newspaper publisher, and Mom, a modern art dealer, are wealthy white liberals — Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, no less — so surely there can be no problem. Complications ensue before everyone does the right thing. [...]
Yet much has changed for the better since the era of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” thanks to the epic battles of the civil-rights movement that have made the Obama phenomenon possible. As Mark Harris reminds us in his recent book about late 1960s Hollywood, “Pictures at a Revolution,” it was not until the year of the movie’s release that the Warren Court handed down the Loving decision overturning laws that forbade interracial marriage in 16 states; in the film’s final cut there’s still an outdated line referring to the possibility that the young couple’s nuptials could be illegal (as Obama’s parents’ marriage would have been in, say, Virginia). In that same year of 1967, L.B.J.’s secretary of state, Dean Rusk, offered his resignation when his daughter, a Stanford student, announced her engagement to a black Georgetown grad working at NASA. (Johnson didn’t accept it.)
Imagine that — a Secretary of State thinking he needed to offer his resignation over the fact that his daughter was getting engaged to a black man. And of course President Johnson who, for all his flaws, showed enormous political courage and mettle on this and other closely related topics, rejecting the offer. Forty one years ago when Obama was a kid and John McCain was a fighter pilot in Vietnam.
CORRECTION: A reader points out that McCain wasn’t a fighter pilot:
Correction: August 12, 2008
An article on Sunday about Senator John McCain’s campaign management style described his role as a Navy pilot in Vietnam incorrectly. He flew bombing missions as an attack aircraft pilot, but he was not a “fighter pilot.” (The error has appeared in numerous other Times articles the past dozen years, most recently on April 9 and on Dec. 15, 2007.)
Apologies for the error, I must have picked up my bad information from the Times. I think the point stands.
41 Responses to “Guess Who’s Coming to the White House”
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November 2nd, 2008 at 11:13 am
And yet people say they hope Obama is the next FDR when he could be LBJ with out the Vietnam mess and it would be just as well.
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:36 am
Did they get married? and stay same
Rusk was a very southern guy.
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:37 am
LBJ, is you can believe the comment he made when he signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, knew he was handing the south to the Republicans for a generation.
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:40 am
As usual, Hollywood’s idea of “daring” was about 10 years behind the times. Obama’s parents actually did in the 1950’s what the movie talked about in the 60’s. There was a MAD Magazine parody of the movie in which the groom’s parents come in at the end and say to the bride, “Wait a minute. Our son’s graduated from Yale and Johns Hopkins and he’s going to marry YOU? Sorry, honey, you’re just not good enough for him.”
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:02 pm
LBJ did brave things… on the other hand, he was nuts. Obama’s apparent sanity is one thing that stands out– one can hope it’s not just an act.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I grew up in Georgia. I remember segregation. Every public building was either whites only, colored only or had separate waiting rooms. The Greyhound bus station in downtown Atlanta, for example, had separate waiting rooms. If a park wasn’t whites only, it had separate drinking fountains for whites and colored (the terms on the signs, by the way). Without exception the colored rooms, entrances, fountains, etc., were dirty and shabby. White churches had colored sections (mostly for maids and drivers) in the back of the balcony. Movie theaters had colored sections in the balcony.
And every gas station had 3 sets of restrooms – men, women and colored. If the men’s room was dirty you could be sure that the colored room would be unbridled squalor.
All of this is stuff I remember. It was hardly ever talked about then and I bet it is not taught in schools now.
At the time, this was done by Democrats (it was the “solid South”). The “Southern Strategy” was designed to appeal to the people who supported segregation, in other words, who supported this, and it was largely effective. At the time I thought that the Republicans would rue the day they got into bed with the segregationists, and it looks as if that is finally coming to pass.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:15 pm
let’s not forget that we have a sitting vice-president who’s lesbian daughter had a child while in a committed relationship with another woman. still, he felt it necessary to demonize said type of relationships, but still: progress!
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:30 pm
As usual, Hollywood’s idea of “daring” was about 10 years behind the times.
I don’t think this holds true as a general statement and it’s definitely false for the late 60s and early 70s, cf. e.g.:
Midnight Cowboy
Bonnie and Clyde
Easy Rider
The Graduate
M*A*S*H
Harold and Maude
The Last Picture Show
French Connection
Five Easy Pieces
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:33 pm
That movie was so stupid. This young girl had decided in the course of a week that she wanted to marry a much older man and immediately move to Africa with him. You think the parents might be concerned??!!!??? Watching the movie recently myself, I thought that the concept is scandalous, but it has nothing to do with the race of the characters involved. And Sidney Poitier’s continual apologizing for having fallen in love doesn’t help anything.
This would be like if Obama was the completely untested governor of Alaska pulled out of no where 2 months before the election. It’s as if Hollywood wanted to make it okay to be opposed to the interracial relationship by throwing a lot of complicating variables in to make it unsuitable for completely different reasons.
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:57 am
I’m also 27. Maybe the 1994 midterms seem like ancient history to Matt, but they were the first political event that I really paid attention to. It wasn’t that long ago.
Even desegregation wasn’t that long ago either. Loving v. Virginia was just 13 years before Matt and I were born, and we’re not that old. We didn’t make serious progress towards abolishing segregation until the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts were passed in 1964 and 1965. De jure segregation and overt racism by private businesses were facts of life when Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice, and Colin Powell were growing up.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I had forgotten about Secretary Rusk, his family and President Johnson. Here’s a way to think about how far we have come. Would Secretary Rice even think about resigning if her son was going to marry a white woman….. Would have been unthinkable all around in 1967 that her son was going to marry another man of any color.
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Yes, racial segregation in the South was horrible 40-50 years ago, but according to Chuck Todd, Obama is more likely to over perform among white men in the South and under perform among white men in the Northeast. Todd is expecting for the Bradley effect to impact the race in the NE but the reverse-Bradley effect to occur in the South.
When thinking about where race relations stand today in America, it’s important to recognize how successful the school bussing program was at integrating small towns and suburban communities. Urban communities, I think, still represent an interesting opportunity for integration efforts. Ghettos like Caprini Green and the Rober Taylor homes in Chicago were torn down a decade ago. What have been the results of these efforts? What else can be done?
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Keith,
I don’t think the movie was that far behind. Sure in Hawaii it was ok for whites and blacks to marry long before ‘67, but in the late 60s CBS still felt the need to cancel a variety secial simply because Harry Belafonte touched the arm of a white woman while signing a duet.
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:27 pm
A reader points out that McCain wasn’t a fighter pilot:
Of all the stuff to correct, you fix this?
The US Navy itself no longer distinguishes between ‘fighter’ aircraft and ‘attack’ aircraft.
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
McCain was never a pilot.
The Navy prefers to call them “aviators.” So there.
November 2nd, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I’m 35 and my dad went to a segregated white high school in Florida, graduating in 1965. At the time there was a white high school, a black one, and a mixed one in his county. By the time his seven-years-younger sister entered the school, it was desegregated.
November 2nd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Personally, I love it when 27-year-olds realize that a whole bunch of stuff happened before they were born and that they aren’t really the center of the universe. Except that should really happen at about age 23. Just sayin’.
November 2nd, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I always thought that the best cinema metaphor of the Obama campaign was Blazing Saddles. See here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcZ9ku_wInw
or here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYZDDSTsomE
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I always thought that Sidney could have done better.
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Thanks
November 2nd, 2008 at 10:48 pm
“Imagine that — a Secretary of State thinking he needed to offer his resignation over the fact that his daughter was getting engaged to a black man. ”
Heck, I could see a Republican Secretary of State thinking he needed to offer his resignation over the fact that his daughter (or worse yet his son) was engaged to a same-sex partner.
I can’t track the craziness of the religious mind, so I don’t know if there’d be some sort of outrage if the daughter were to become engaged to a Muslim, worse yet an arabic Muslim, worse yet an atheist.
It’s nice to see how far the country has come, but it shouldn’t blind us to the fact that there are a**holes at all times and in all places, including here and now. god knows I see plenty of “Yes on 8″ anti-gay-marriage signs all over LA, and let’s not forget that the prime movers behind this particular work of hate are organized religion.
November 3rd, 2008 at 12:50 am
As usual, Hollywood’s idea of “daring” was about 10 years behind the times. Obama’s parents actually did in the 1950’s what the movie talked about in the 60’s.
Except that Sidney Poitier wasn’t playing a drunk bigamist. And presumably he didn’t abandon his second wfe because he thought a gig at Harvard where they wouldn’t pay for his family was better than a gig at the New School for Social Research where they would.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 am
If the Obama campaign is Blazing Saddles then economic liberals are the Irish.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:57 am
A damned shame Dick Cheney didn’t think so.
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