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The Use of Paradoxes

(I write about paradoxes; I find them

far more interesting than stories about

victims. /wr.)

History should never scrub itselfcleanof all its paradoxes, for within

these are its potential transformations.

Mississippi elected black officials to

local offices than any of the 50 states,

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/opinion/blow-a-nation-divided-against-itself.html?comments#permid=4:11http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/opinion/blow-a-nation-divided-against-itself.html?comments#permid=4:11http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/opinion/blow-a-nation-divided-against-itself.html?comments#permid=4:11http://blackhistory360.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/sk-a-2248-2.jpghttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/opinion/blow-a-nation-divided-against-itself.html?comments#permid=4:11http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/opinion/blow-a-nation-divided-against-itself.html?comments#permid=4:11

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including sheriffs, school superintendents, council members, and mayors,

men and women.

George Wallace, struck like Saul, appointed more African-American

department heads and state officials than any Alabama governor after

apologizing for his racism publicly to the communities, and following

through on his promise to do so--still the only public official to directly admit

and rebuke his own racism (unlike Haley Barbour, Ron Paul, and others) and

then act intentionally to make amends.

Ironically, Arthur Davis, the former black Democratic Rep who introduced

Barack in 2008, and who ran for Alabama's governorship in 2010, losing his

hometown precinct, showed up in Tampa as a newly reborn Republican,

failed to follow Wallace's populist appeal.

Compare Tim Scott to Strom Thurmond for a political paradox!

Paradoxes are to history what handholds are to an unharnessed rock climber

on El Captain; the anomalies of opportunity that are often the way forward,

that we don't see from the distance.

As we push for grace, we should subdue the self-interest of our judgement. I

am always astounded that so few recall the American enslaved came to the

day of jubilee laughing, in a spirit of rejoicing, not always so for a liberated

people.

It was not their understanding of politics, but their knowledge and mastery ofparadox that kept them alive and bound to mercy.

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