From Ezra:
Towards the end of the 1967 movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” Dr. John Wane Prentice, played by Sydney Poitier, sits down with his fiance’s white father, played by Spencer Tracy. “Have you given any thought to the problems your children will have?” Tracy asks. “Yes, and they’ll have some…[But] Joey feels that all of our children will be President of the United States,” replies Poitier. “How do you feel about that?” asks Tracy, looking skeptically at the black man in front of him. “I’d settle for Secretary of State,” Poitier laughs.
Written in the late-1960s, the exchange was, indeed, laughable. The Civil Rights Act had been passed three years prior. Two years before, the Watts riots had broken out, killing 35. Martin Luther King Jr. would be assassinated a year later. But here we are, almost exactly 40 years after theatergoers heard that exchange. The last two Secretaries of State were African-American and, as of tonight, the next president may well be a black man. John Prentice’s children would probably still be in their late-30s.
The rest of Ezra’s post is sometimes a little too hurrah-hurrah for me, since I think in many ways black and white Americans still are too often living in two nations. But I really liked the passage quoted above.
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I was a teenager when that movie came out. I actually remember seeing it during it’s first run. It was an important movie, and I’m not much of a movie goer. Even as a kid I had an appreciation for what it meant. Sydney Portier laughed as part of the script, but I don’t remember that anyone else did.
It wasn’t a laughable exchange. It was a hopeful one. Perhaps Portier was laughing at the audacity of that hope. But it seemed possible then, even to a lower-middle class white kid in a town with one black family. America has truly come a long way. While I’m not intending to vote for Sen. Obama, that’s over his politics, not his race. I think it’s a good thing that a black man can be on America’s Presidential ballot.
interesting comparison.
When the asteroid hits, you’ll all be sorry!
But seriously, this is a good thing. Hurrah hurrah hurrah hurrah!
When the asteroid hits I’ll be glad I don’t live on beachfront property. Although after it hits I may well end up on such, depending on when it hits.