Black Panther

This is Black History Month and the big news has been about the release of the movie Black Panther.  This movie is built around the supposedly first Black superhero. I probably will not go to see this movie, not because of the hero but I am just not into superhero type movies of any type.

We tend to think of black heroes as either sports or entertainment stars:  Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, just three of the great black baseball players of my time; Louie Armstrong, Denzell Washington, Ella Fitzgerald in the entertainment world.

But this got me thinking about real black heroes, most of whom we don’t hear much about.  Let me tell you about some of them, both American and Canadian.

William Hall, VC – William Hall was a black Nova Scotian who joined the Royal Navy as a young man. He was a gunner. He fought in the Crimean War and the Indian Uprisings where he won the Victoria Cross.  When his military career was finished, he returned to Nova Scotia where he farmed and raised a family.  Most Canadians have never heard of him.

Viola Desmond – was a black woman from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia who was arrested for having the temerity to sit in the “white section” of a movie theatre.  She will be the new face on a Canadian ten dollar bill in the near future.

Frederick Douglass – was a black American who became one of the great proponents of the abolition of slavery and a spokesman for black rights after the Civil War.  He was born into slavery but was released from that condition when he was 20, many years before the Emancipation Proclamation.  He was admired by Abraham Lincoln who called him a friend.  This year is the bicentennial of Douglass’ birth.  An article in today’s (Wednesday) Ottawa Citizen speaks eloquently about him.

Samuel L. Gravely, Vice-Admiral, US Navy (retired) – was the first black admiral in the US Navy.  I had the privilege of working for him when I served an exchange appointment with that service.  Sam Gravely joined the Navy early in World War 2.  He was one of the first black candidates selected for officer training but not the first to be commissioned.  He served a distinguished career in the US Navy and was selected for the rank of Rear-Admiral in 1972-73.  When I met him he was the Commander of Cruiser Destroyer Group Two in Newport, Rhode Island.  The command where I worked was integrated into his command in 1974 when our combined group was moved to Charleston, South Carolina of all places.  After leaving our group in the summer of 1975 he went first to San Diego and then on promotion to Vice-Admiral, became Commander of the Third Fleet in Hawaii.  He had a great sense of humour.

There are four examples of black people who, each in their own way, were real life heroes of their time.  There have been others of course: Lincoln Alexander, politician and Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario; General Colin Powell of the US Army; Ferguson Jenkins, Canadian boy who became a great pitcher in baseball.  But all people can talk about this week is a black superhero in a movie.

Teenagers Today

“Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.”
  - Henrik Tikkanen

There always seems to be a way of denigrating teenagers.  “They’re too young”, “They need to grow up”, “They’re not like us when we were teenagers”, “They’re lazy”, “They spend too much time on their electronic devices”.  But there are two very recent examples where teenagers have shown their maturity and resolve.

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
  - George Orwell

The first example was brought to light by the death a few days ago of Becca Schofield of New Brunswick.  She died at the age of 18 two years after she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.  When she was first diagnosed, she did not just curl up and feel sorry for herself, but became an advocate for kindness between people.  Her call for such kindness spawned a movement called #BeccaToldMeTo wherein people who did such deeds of kindness would respond, “Becca told me to” when asked why they had done it. God know we need such kindness in the world and this brave young woman became an advocate for it.  The courage that it took her to become such an advocate in the middle of the fight of her life is amazing.  She could have become bitter about such a fate.  But she didn’t.  She advocated kindness.  While so-called adults bicker about almost anything, this teenager chose a message that should resonate in everyone’s mind.

The second example is the students of Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida who have just survived yet another mass shooting in a school and have lost 17 of their schoolmates.  It must have been a terrifying experience for all of those who survived.  But their response to this tragedy has been to speak out and demand more gun control.  This is not a trivial matter.  Florida is a state with very liberal (read lax) gun legislation.  I’m sure that many of their parents are gun owners and perhaps loyal members of the National Rifle Association (NRA).  But these students are speaking up.  One senior student, Emma Gonzalez, spoke for many of them on Saturday at a gun control rally in Fort Lauderdale.  She systematically tore apart the various arguments used by the gun lobby to justify the proliferation of guns.  One of the more common arguments states that one good man with a gun could stop a bad man with a gun and thereby prevent or limit mass shootings.  The problem with this argument is that not once, in any of the mass shootings in living memory, has this ever happened.  The government states that the problem is not guns but mental illness.  In this argument, everyone who uses a gun to shoot someone else must be mentally ill. And yet in almost all cases when the shooter has been caught and brought to trial, mental illness was never proven as a factor.  That’s why in so many states, death row is populated by legally sane shooters.  The fact that students, such as those in Parkland, are the ones leading the cry for something to be done speaks volumes not only for them, but the millions of adults who do nothing.  The adults will make sure that, at least for the near future, that no significant changes will be made that could curb the ongoing gun violence in the United States and the growing gun violence in parts of Canada.

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”
  - Christopher Morley

Teenagers tend to be idealistic.  The two examples above illustrate this.  This is a very good thing for the future.  They may be able to solve a lot of today’s problems. They are at a stage when, with encouragement, they can think out of the box.  What we, as adults, have to do is nurture this idealism rather than denigrating it with such phrases as, “You’ll know better when you grow up”, “Where did you get that stupid idea?” or “Get real”.  There have been too many generations that have sold out their idealism as they grew older, including many in my own.  The idealism of the 60s and 70s (anti-war, peace and love, communal living) gave way to the cynicism and greed of the 80s and 90s.  Gordon Gecko became their hero.

The examples above are not unique.  There are a lot of insightful and idealistic young people out there, many of them teenagers.  Support them.  Encourage their idealistic ideas.  Lose your cynicism and maybe become a bit more idealistic yourself.

“There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.”
  - Emile Chartier

 

Some February Thoughts

A story in the Globe and Mail this Saturday said that one candidate for the  B.C. Liberal party leadership had almost 1400 of the members who he had signed up were considered ineligible because they did not have an e-mail address.  Although there were various other factors involved, the fact that the lack of an e-mail address was the one most quoted raises a number of questions about what it takes to be a member of society these days.  Does the lack of an e-mail address, a Twitter account or a Facebook page now deprive you of the right to be seen, heard or informed?  In another example, this past week Bell was hosting their Let’s Talk forum.  Since I suffer from clinical depression, I wanted to become part of the conversation.  So I went on-line to the Bell site to see how I could join in.  I found that I could submit comments on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, none of which I belong to.  But I obviously have an e-mail account.  But nowhere did the site allow me to interact via e-mail.  So I was unable to participate and mental health lost the 5¢ it would have brought them.

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I don’t know how many of you watched or listened to President Trump’s State of the Union address this week, but the part that I listened to was the most jingoistic speech I have ever heard from a democratically elected head of state.  The constant introduction of “heroes”, almost all in uniform and white males was a distraction that a serious address did not need.  In addition, as one writer noted, in the 5330 words he spoke he never once mentioned the word democracy and anything alluding to it.  To hear Congressman Joseph Kennedy III rebut the speech was, by comparison, a model of oratory worth listening to.

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Speaking of Mr. Trump, I have a couple of thoughts about why he has such trouble with domestic and foreign affairs.  With respect to domestic affairs, he has no experience with anyone leaning over his shoulder telling what he can and cannot do as Congress is doing now.  As a businessman who has run his own business empire for most of his life, such oversight is foreign to him.  He does not know how to deal with or how to get things done.  Add the judicial system to the mix and he finds it untenable.  This could be why he seems to want to discredit the FBI and the Justice Department among others. 

As for foreign affairs, it is a similar situation.  As a businessman, he is used to dealing one on one with other business people when it comes to trying to reach a deal.  He is used to concentrating on that one other person and try to bend him/her to Trump’s will using all of the tricks of the trade that he has extoled in his book ‘The Art of the Deal’. When he has to deal with multiple opponents, like he has to in multilateral trade and other forms of international dialogue, he cannot just concentrate on one, he has to deal with many.  This would explain a lot about his attitude toward NAFTA for example.  He would love nothing better that to see NAFTA collapse so he could deal one on one with Canada and then Mexico.  That way he thinks he could get the upper hand and the type of I win-you lose deal he really wants.

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If you look back to the end of the Second World War, you will find that the joint North and South Korean Olympic team is the most positive thing that has ever happened there.  Could this be the beginning of a dialogue between these countries that leads to better relationships, and cuts the US out the equation?  After all, in any conflict that involves outside powers, these are the two nations that would suffer the most.

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Those of you who are aware of the removal of the statue of Edward Cornwallis in Halifax need to reread my earlier blog about retroactive justice, http://jgforbes.blogspot.ca/2016/05/sins-of-fathers.html.

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The best advice that I have had this year is from my son who told me not to venture into the current discussion about improper relationships between men and women, and particularly anything to do with the #MeToo movement.  I’ll say no more on the subject.