Evolution

Dear Boo and Bubble,

What with all of the questions about marriage equality before the Supreme Court this week, I’ve heard the word “evolving” used by just about everybody.  In my mind’s dictionary, the word “evolve” means to “move from one perception to another based upon bits of information gathered along the way.”  The process can apply to all aspects of life, from the trivial like grits to more weighty issues like the ones currently before the court.  

We are all born into sets of circumstances or moments in time that proffer a cultural baseline from which we begin.  Sometimes, the advancements in science and technology force a relatively easy change.  We now know something that we didn’t before and this new knowledge develops our thoughts to higher levels.  To ignore growth through discovery is like opting for leaches over penicillin. 

The far more difficult evolution, however, is that of thought or opinion on the values of society.  Perhaps the truth of this lies in the fact that a nuanced shift in how one sees the world can modify longstanding, closely held attitudes.  Oftentimes, this occurrence creates conflict in families and extended communities.  The ruptures can be so severe not even time can heal them.  In the history of our country, this is particularly true in the context of civil rights.

Much of the impetus for cultural evolution comes from life’s experiences.  Sometimes these emerge from a very personal source.  In the current debate on marriage equality, Sen. Rob Portman came to accept the concept because his son revealed that he was gay.  Nothing could have so powerfully influenced Portman from afar.  The new-found awareness of private consequences now propels him into a broader agenda for those he doesn’t even know.

Sometimes, however, the experience is externally driven….sort of like Paul’s Damascus Road.  Your great, great granddaddy Schaefer encountered two such events in his life that began his evolution on civil rights for African-Americans in 1936 and catapulted him into the arena of cultural change 30 years later.  When he was 77 years old, he wrote about them.

“In my life there were two episodes that radically altered my view on racial matters.  The first occurred in 1936 at Winthrop College.  A mock meeting of the League of Nations was held by the International Relations Clubs of the colleges in this state, the subject being Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.

I got the floor, and in righteous indignation I indicted Hitler and the German people, cataloguing the manifold acts of The Third Reich that made the Jews a sub-human species.  As I walked back to my seat to the applause of the delegates, I felt good, I even felt righteous (which I have since learned is a dangerous state).

A German exchange student got the floor after me.  He as the tall, blonde, blue-eyed Aryan that Hitler envisioned would sire his mater-race.  He was not only handsome, but also he was a dynamic speaker whose English was impeccable and sarcasm devastating.  He took my words and the cataloguing I had done and simply changed Jew to Negro of the South.  He was diabolical; I was demolished.

The next episode occurred in the railway station in Houston in 1945.  I was on my way to a naval assignment in the Pacific and had taken Mary to be with her mother, who lived in Houston.  Mary was pregnant with Bryant.  We were standing on the concourse that ran adjacent to the restaurant waiting for my troop train; and agonizing over saying good-bye.

Shortly a train arrived that had some 30 German prisoners of war, all officers and Hitler’s finest.  Their posture, movements and demeanor exuded arrogance.  The MP’s marched them into the restaurant where they sat at tables covered with linens and served by waitresses, all white.

About this time, there arrived a train carrying an all-black company of Logistic Support Troops (the Navy’s euphemism for stevedores).  Like me they were on their way to serve Uncle Sam’s Navy wherever they were ordered.

Because of the Texas Jim Crow law, they could not be fed in the restaurant.  There was a window between the restaurant and concourse and these troops were marched by this window and handed out milk and sandwiches.  They could see through the window the POWs sitting at the tables being served.

I wondered at the time; if I were one of those observing POWs being served on the other side of the window, what would my attitude be toward the country in whose uniform I was serving?  I, also, wondered what the Nazis were thinking, and whether one of them might be the exchange student who so humbled me at Winthrop.”

Great granddaddy’s painstaking evolution led him to a leadership role in the battle for integration of the1970’s.  Both of you will evolve, each in your own way….and that’s okay…as long as you channel it for a broader good.