Bending the Moral Arc Toward Justice

Defending Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”  –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., March 31, 1968.

I walked picket lines and joined hands with others singing, “We shall overcome.”  The lessons of direct action and participatory democracy empowered me, gave me agency and voice.  I believed that social justice movements opened wide avenues for other movements.  I’ve been a believer in the long arc bending toward justice. 

I lived that experience for two formative decades.  Hard-fought battles brought change, expanded rights, opened doors.  I watched it happen for Blacks and for women, for lesbians and gays, for Texas Chicanos.

Lately, it doesn’t’ feel that the arc is bending toward justice.  Maybe the arc is morphing into a deadly boomerang.  With the erosion of rights I thought were won for my generation and ones to follow, the trajectory of the long arc is unclear. Perhaps we are slouching toward the apocalypse instead. 

I’ve been listening to Heather Cox Richardson recently.  She’s a professor of American history at Boston College, and she offers a different explanation.  She takes a long view, and doesn’t shy away from lengthy podcasts.  In a nine-part series called The American Paradox, she presents themes from her book, How the South Won the Civil War.  I haven’t listened to all nine hours, but I’ve been intrigued by what I’ve heard.  Did the South win the Civil War? 

I was raised in Austin, Texas.  In the 50s, it was the Jim Crow South with all the trappings, segregated schools and swimming pools, a poll tax, and Confederate statues.  A stain-glass image of Robert E. Lee was behind the altar at the church where I grew up.  In 1959, my junior high was de-segregated by five brave Black students.  By 1960, sit-ins were taking place at Austin lunch counters and Stand-Ins at the box offices of movie theaters.  Things changed.

We now have a Texas legislature hell-bent on returning to yesteryear.  The long view of Heather Cox Richardson can explain this.  She argues that American history has always been marked by conflict between those battling for more inclusion and participation against the oligarchs who proclaim they are entitled to rule. 

The abolition of slavery happened one hundred years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act.  The Civil War victory that ended slavery was followed quickly by Black Codes and Klan mobilizations in the South, and a narrative that the Civil War was really about states’ rights.

We are living through a similar counter-offensive these days.  We’re witnessing an all-out war on women’s rights.  Patriarchy is on the warpath and it’s not just targeting reproductive rights.  The evangelical right and their allies are championing a return to “traditional” roles for women, banning books about same-sex relationships, and outlawing gender affirming healthcare.

All the old racist tropes are getting a new life as the Supreme Court upends decades of protection for voting rights and strikes down affirmative action for college admissions. 

In the South, where years of gerrymandering have hardened the arteries of the body politic, state legislators are having a field day.  The writer and humorist Molly Ivins said, “Texas has always been the national laboratory for bad government.”  Molly would have had a lot to say in recent years. 

In 2023, the Texas legislature passed Senate Bill 17 forcing state universities to eliminate programs promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).  Universities scrambled to comply.  And in the spring of 2024, the University of Texas at Austin made the surprise move of doubling down on their efforts by firing over 60 state employees associated with already-eliminated DEI programs.

{For more about the DEI firings, listen to Rag Radio’s interview with Anne Lewis.]

Progressive media pundits focus on the battle between democracy and authoritarianism.  There is truth to this, but the deeper truth is the conflict Heather Cox Richardson describes.  We are engaged in a battle for inclusion and participation in democracy.  The defenders of yesteryear are fine with white males being in power.  Some will go so far as to say that is ordained by scripture.  They are wistful for a time with less diversity.  They believe that inequity is a necessary ingredient for the free market economy.

Heather Cox Richardson reminds us that the struggle for social justice never ends.  She also studies the forces that align to change what seems to be a certain trajectory.  Abraham Lincoln’s election is an example she uses.  The lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina challenged Jim Crow in 1960.  The sit-ins electrified a generation of activists and changed the world.