(1) Driving While Black

We watched PBS last night and saw the two hour documentary “Driving While Black”. It’s not a perfect title. But it was an interesting program – the history of transportation for Blacks in America. Starting with limitations on slave travel, the difficulties during Reconstruction, segregation on trains and in train stations, the danger of traveling by car as well as the lack of restaurants, motels and gas stations that would serve Blacks along the road. Sad, but to me familiar, story – I can’t say that I “learned” anything. But I am 80 years old and lived through much of the time covered. I’m not Black, but I have heard, or read about, these stories again and again. But the program is interesting, and the historic photos and videos were most interesting.

But what I thought about, while watching, was Florida. Why? Because it seemed to me that, if a bill now in the state legislature is passed, it would be illegal to watch this film in any public institution. As I understand it, the law would prohibit public institutions from teaching that any institutions in the United States were “created to maintain social, political or economic inequities.” Now we don’t know if this bill will pass (everything seems to pass in Florida right now), but if it does…….

Slavery was clearly created to maintain social, political or economic inequities, as were the laws passed during the Jim Crow era, and the institutions that permitted Blacks and Whites to be treated apart from each other, including public buildings like, say, train stations. And the entire premise of this documentary is to demonstrate just that.

If documentaries like this cannot be shown in public institutions (and that would include public universities, libraries, etc, as well as K-12 schools), how will Florida children or Floridians in general learn about this?

Now let’s look at this from another perspective. Let’s move for a minute to Holocaust education, which is now mandated in some, but not all states. We have had more Holocaust education than ever before, and we have had more instances of antisemitism. How can this be? I have recently seen a lot of questions related to Holocaust education? (1) Can children born, say, at least 65 years after the end of World War II, relate to the Holocaust? Does this education mean any more to them than learning about the Armenian genocide that occurred 35 years before? (2) Even worse, does Holocaust education really teach that antisemitism is dangerous and to be avoided because “look where it can lead”, or does it teach some young people that Jews were fair game then, and maybe they should be fair game now? In other words, does Holocaust education run the risk of increasing, not decreasing, antisemitism?

It’s a terrible thought, but is it possible that the way to fight antisemitism is not to talk about Jewish history? Is it possible that the way to limit discrimination against Blacks is not to talk about Black history? This is as counterintuitive as it gets, to be sure. And I am not saying that I agree with this theory. But….like most things….we should give it some careful thought.

(2) De Rerum Natura

Let’s have a shout out for Lucretius! After finishing the “History of the U.S.S.R.”, I went to the next semi-reject on my pile of Penguins: Lucretius’ “The Nature of the Universe” (“De Rerum Natura”). Turned out that this one was equally fascinating.

The translator, R.E. Latham, gave a fascinating introduction to this long, long poem (no, I did not read every word – I read a lengthy synopsis and selected particular segments to read – I think Lucretius would have been satisfied), making it clear that the worlds of Athens 2300 years ago and of Rome 2100 years ago did share some characteristics of our world today. Namely, things taken for granted were disappearing, no one knew what was going to happen next but everyone sensed that it wasn’t going to be good, and what’s the world coming to, anyway? He spoke of Diogenes the Cynic, Zeno the Stoic, and Epicurus, who relied on “common sense”. Lucretius, living two hundred years or so later, was a follower of Epicurus.

This means that, in explaining the universe, Epicurus relied on what his mind told him made sense. And a lot of what his mind told him finds resonance in today’s science. The universe had a beginning and is going to have an end. If there are gods, they live in an entirely different plane from humans and there is no contact. The gods did not create the universe, will not destroy it, and certainly don’t interfere in or give a damn about what we humans do. Human beings are made up of “atoms” (not Lucretius’ word, of course), which are the building blocks of everything in the universe. This is no afterlife, your atoms don’t disappear but as your body disintegrates, your atoms just go somewhere else and become part of something else. No atom disappears. But death is death, and your mind and your spirit disappear along with your body. No reason to worry about it. You are part of something bigger than yourself. And as you live your life, your common sense will lead you along. The world exists, your senses allow you to see what exists, nothing exists beyond what your senses can see or hear or touch or feel. Nothing is so important to go to extremes about. You don’t need as many things as you may think you need. We all wind up the same.

A shout out to Lucretius, whoever you may be. And, yes, we really don’t know that much about him. At all.