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Scott Simon's Essays
The Evolution of Thanksgiving
Nov. 24, 2001 -- Sixty years ago, Americans sat down to Thanksgiving dinner and gave thanks for not being embroiled in the wars that were raging overseas. Just days later, that thanks curdled. We were brought into those wars with the attack on Pearl Harbor. This year's Thanksgiving occurs just after an assault that has been compared to Pearl Harbor in the size of its shock and loss. As we approach that anniversary on a weekend of thanks in a year of loss, we might measure the country that was struck 60 years ago against the one we hold in our hands and hearts now. Sixty years ago, America was regarded as both the beacon for freedom and a bastion for official racism. The American armed forces that went to war to liberate an imprisoned world were deeply segregated. In fact, black soldiers often looked forward to leaving Army bases in the South for staging areas in England where they could at least walk into a pub that didn't have a sign saying, `Whites only.' Anti-Semitism was accepted as a custom. Women were routinely locked out of full opportunity. Gays had to live in a kind of hiding.
Today, Jim Crow laws have given way to Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Charles Rangel making laws. Condoleezza Rice, in fact, grew up in segregated Birmingham during the years in which four other precious young women of her age were blown up in a church basement by racist thugs. Today she helps guide a military effort that has already delivered a victory to Afghan women, who can shed their burqas, and Afghan children, who can freely fly kites.
Shortly after the attack at Pearl Harbor, several thousand Japanese-Americans were confined to internment camps. The men who signed off on those orders were embodiments of political liberalism, California Governor Earl Warren, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black and President Franklin Roosevelt. Sixty years later, within hours of the attacks on New York and Washington, steadfast conservatives, most notably, President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft and a strong-handed advocate for law and order, Mayor Giuliani, were outspoken in defending American Muslims, not only their civil rights but their good citizenship and simple goodness.
To be sure, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and gay bashing are still alive and still inflict hurt and misery. But on this weekend in particular, we might take some tummy-thumping satisfaction in reminding ourselves of the blessing we have to live in a nation that can be so persistently changed, improved and renewed. It's a time to recall not just the birth of a nation, but the ways in which this nation can be constantly reborn.
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