Column: Nothing as consistent as change
One of my favorite autumn pastimes is to spend several hours on Sunday afternoons in sports bars that offer the full package of NFL games. These cozy establishments are the last havens in America where one can find casual camaraderie that extends across generational lines.
On a recent visit to one of these taverns, I was drawn into a conversation with a group of recent college graduates and, as was often the case on such occasions, the conversation ventured into topics beyond the realm of football. (Most of the pilgrims who frequent these Sunday services have mastered the art of indulging in verbal digressions while maintaining a steely focus on the games they’re watching.)
At one point, they began talking about student loans and the astronomical debts that have to be borne by so many of their peers.
That led them, perhaps inevitably, into a discussion of how difficult it was to find good jobs in desirable professions.
I mainly listened to their litany of grievances. After all, this was their world and I didn’t want to intrude on it. But then suddenly one of the millennials turned to me and asked, “So what was it like back in your day?”
“Oh, let’s not go there,” I replied. But they pressed me, and I decided to give them a detailed and forthright answer. And here, in essence, is what I told them:
Back in my day — the 1950s — we had student loans, but they amounted to chump change compared to the billions of dollars in debt that now burden those who have attended college in the past 20 years or so.
As for appealing jobs, we college graduates from that era had plenty to choose from. In short, during the 50’s and 60’s, the world was pretty much our oyster, but only for those of us who happened to be white males. That was the prevailing reality.
In my case, I chose journalism, and guided by the advice of a savvy professor I trusted, I accepted an offer from United Press International.
During my first five years at UPI, I almost never saw an African-American in the newsroom. And what was sauce for the UPI bureaus was sauce for every other major media center in America. As for women, there were a few, but they were mainly secretaries or researchers or those who covered food and fashion and similar subjects that were deemed suitable for what were once called “Women’s Pages.”
I must confess I never questioned the rigid status quo of those years. Nor did my colleagues. Or if any of them did, I don’t remember it, and I have a pretty good memory. As I recall, we accepted our white-male privileges and advantages as our proper due. We overdosed on entitlement.
But the time was approaching when the long reign of white-male power in our professions, our politics and our culture would have to confront challenges so strong that they smacked of revolution.
The first major upheaval was the civil rights movements of the 1960s. That monumental triumph over the forces of legal segregation emboldened African-Americans to assert their rights in other spheres, including professions from which they had long been excluded.
Then a few years later came the women’s liberation movement (as it was called then), and although the leaders of that cause had their own agenda, they acknowledged that they had taken their cue for action from the civil rights movement. And on one vital front — the push for equal rights in the workplace — the two rebellions complemented each other.
I had ample opportunity to observe the progress they made, at least in my chosen field. By the early 1980s, women and minorities had managed to infiltrate American newsrooms, and one also encountered them on political campaigns and other beats that had to be covered.
Taking the long view, the civil rights and women’s movements launched a long and arduous journey that has gradually nudged America ever closer to becoming a truly multi-ethnic, multi-racial and gender-neutral nation — and we’re the better for it.
At the same time, I’m well aware that there are millions of my fellow white males who don’t share my view on this subject. But hey, that’s democracy, and I believe that they’re on the wrong side of history.
Speaking of which, back in the day when those protest movements began, I never dreamed that I would live long enough to see the country elect a black man president and then, four years later, vote to keep him in the White House for a second term.
Many of us had hoped that Barack Obama’s successor would be America’s first woman President. But even though Hillary Clinton was Trumped on Tuesday, she still has the distinction of being the first female to be nominated for that office by one of the two major parties. And that alone qualifies as the most damaging blow yet to be inflicted on that notorious glass ceiling.
Another big story this autumn was the news from Stockholm that the Nobel Prize for Literature had been awarded to Bob Dylan, the freewheeling troubadour whose music and inspiring lyrics perfectly captured the rebellious spirit of the 60’s.
When I heard about the Nobel decision, I immediately began singing one of my favorites from the Dylan oeuvre, the early protest song that, among other things, proved to be so prophetic.
To paraphrase the title of that 1964 song, there can be no doubt that in so many ways over the past half century, “The Times They’ve Been A-Changin’.”
