Selma

I recently saw the movie Selma which chronicles Martin Luther King's quest to prod Lyndon Johnson to propose and push for voter's rights legislation. The film was clearly made to be moving and it was. I can't even remember how many times it chocked me up. I highly recommend it.

It is amazing how bad the situations was for blacks in 1965 in many areas. In Alabama there were counties with a majority black population but with no registered black voters because they were simply prevented from registering by the powers in local government.

At the end of the Selma march, Martin Luther King's during his speech stated that for a white person, “no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man” This speaks to the real issue of racism, sexism, or any other for of discrimination. Power. Being able to feel that one is better than someone else is sadly quite alluring to people.

Selma, Alabama in 1965 was controlled by a white (to be more precise, white, Protestant, heterosexual, male) group of people that were not about to give up their power and prestige for anyone. They didn't think they were evil, humans and a remarkable capacity for rationalization, and they couldn't imagine that anyone would ever allow blacks to have equal voting rights as whites. If you had told Jim Clark, the Sheriff of Dallas County which included Selma that we would one day have a black, or even worse in his mind, a mixed race President he would have told you that would be impossible. He could not conceive of such a world because it would mean the loss of the superiority his skin color gave him.

In my country divorce court is controlled by lawyers who cannot conceive they are doing anything wrong when they encourage clients to commit perjury or lie themselves under oath. Lawyers who will bleed clients dry in legal fees whether needed or not. Judges who ignore the law and rule based on how well they like the lawyer, Ethical Boards that operate to protect lawyers from malfeasance rather than remove bad lawyers and law enforcement that ignores crimes committed by lawyers. Sound familiar?