This morning I saw a few minutes of the Sotomayor hearings and caught this snippet from Lindsey Graham:

Brown v. Board of Education is instructive in the sense that the court pushed the country to do something politicians were not brave enough to do, certainly were not brave enough in my state. And if I had been elected as a senator from South Carolina in 1955, the year I was born, I would be amazed if I would have had the courage of a Judge Johnson in the political arena.

A high-powered, 14-year congressman publicly said that he would not have done anything to end segregation. (1.) This sentiment should be unacceptable in our society; short of that it should be reserved for the uneducated and unpowerful who genuinely cannot be expected to know better and should not be relied upon for more. I recognize that he said “in my state,” implying that he’d have faced a popular uprising from his white Southern constituents, as if that pressure mitigates his weakness of will. Or his utter lack of moral conviction. Ethically his statement is appalling, but let’s put the ethics aside for a moment and look broader. This national leader admitted outright that he can’t take the heat that comes with making a hard decision—he said he would not do it. So why is he a leader? What is he a leader of?

(2.) That his statement that he would not have worked to end Jim Crow laws will not attract any significant public attention signals that the average white American still does not take the civil rights struggle seriously; in the collective white consciousness it remains a political event, not a moral upheaval. I blame it on an education gap. Most among us are minimally educated about the historical civil rights movement and have no awareness that it continues today. (Look at the polls from November where people said racism is over.)

I don’t know what to do about it. I can’t take everyone to Atlanta and make them tour the King Center (which is free, by the way, and might make you cry in one part!). I study and read about this stuff because I want to make a difference, but then I see this foul grinning rich man on TV saying that, no, what is he, crazy?, or a librul?, he would not overturn the black people laws, and I just feel besieged.

[This is to say nothing of the absurdity of his recognizing the import of Brown v. Board of Education, in the middle of four days of grousing about “activist judges.” Gosh! He is glad there were those activist judges, that one time!]