The news on the internet tonight tells us that Rosa Parks died today, 50 years after refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala.
I will be interested in how our nation responds to her passing. Mrs. Parks was a catalyst for the civil rights movement, her refusal to stand helping to provide a launching point for the civil rights work of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
I'm not black, yet I have a profound respect for the civil rights freedom fighters that preceded my generation. I wonder if I'm any different from the suburban white boy who wants to be gangsta or if, because the cause that moves me is one of human rights rather than the notion of singing about thugs n harmony, I am a different beast entirely. While we both seem entranced by a cultural movement we cannot exactly call our own - the two subjects seem diametrically opposed. One might find some connections between Constitutional Amendments protecting free speech as well as civil rights, I tend to believe deep down that Rosa Parks wasn't sitting so some punk-ass kids could spew obscenities and beat their chests.
I tend to think she wanted her race to be treated the same - as humans.
The courage Rosa Parks embodied is rare in this day and age. Societal pressures to conform, whether the contemporary standards are just, remain as intimidating as ever. Those who today speak against the President, the war or any similar topic are verbally castigated by those in the "majority" as liberals, which is intended as an insinuation of being completely against all those things that define "American" to the collective Right. Liberals = bleeding-heart, tax-loving, homosexual-tolerant, broken-home, abortion-sponsoring romantics who don't go to church and, probably because of that, just don't get the divine supremacy of the Right. Which is how the hell I got to this rant amidst a personal tribute of sorts to Rosa Parks.
She finally had enough of the bullshit our society was operating on for ages. She stood up (by sitting) for what she knew to be inherently right. Our society balked, arrested her, threatened her, harrassed her and drove her out of the state. But because enough people also decided to stand, it eventually made differences that touched the lives of virtually everyone of her race in the generations to follow. That's courage.
Few go to that extreme today. Those who do get quickly tossed aside as some nut or just another liberal trying to make a point. Do any frontiers remain for human rights? You bet. Several issues are as core to humanity as Civil Rights were in the last century. Assisted suicide and homosexuality seem to be screaming for people of courage to emerge. We may some day reach a point where we need to assert the right to freedom FROM religion, if our America continues to be driven by those with a theocratic agenda. Wait - wasn't that the whole point of the, um, American Revolution? Aside from that issue - there will not be another Rosa Parks. RIP.
