Recent editorials from Alabama newspapers:
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Feb. 27
The Gadsden Times on some states’ recent decisions to belatedly pass the Equal Rights Amendment:
A poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released last week showed 3-to-1 support among Americans for an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
You remember the ERA, don’t you? It was passed by Congress - by wide margins in both houses - in the early 1970s, when the concept of women’s liberation was flourishing throughout the country, and sent to the states for ratification.
The operative language in the amendment: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
Government 101 refresher: This country’s Founding Fathers, with good reason, made it quite difficult to amend the Constitution. An amendment requires approval of three-fourths of state legislatures - that’s 38 in a 50-state country - to be enacted.
Congress set a March 22, 1979, deadline for that to happen. It didn’t - only 35 states had ratified the amendment, which drew intense opposition from conservative groups. They contended that there already were plenty of laws and court decisions on record to guarantee equality between men and women, and that passing the ERA would eliminate traditional gender roles, mean female military personnel in combat, spawn same-sex restrooms and marriages, and irrevocably open the door to taxpayer-funded abortions. (We can only imagine the reaction if they’d had a crystal ball.)
The deadline was extended to June 30, 1982. Ratification still didn’t happen; the total remained stuck on 35.
It seemed to be the end of the situation; no one raised an eyebrow when Nevada in 2017 and Illinois in 2018 ratified the amendment.
Everything changed last month, however, when Virginia’s Legislature, now controlled by Democrats with an activist bent, became the 38th state to approve the ERA. Also in February, the House of Representatives - also controlled by Democrats with an activist bent - voted to repeal the 1982 deadline and theoretically clear the way for the amendment to become law.
Of course that legislation has zero chance of escaping the Senate. Also, five states that had passed the ERA have backtracked and rescinded their approval, a situation that ultimately would have to be worked out in the courts.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has filed a federal lawsuit, which his counterparts in Louisiana and South Dakota have joined, seeking to have the door slammed on the ERA.
We’ve often poked at state officials for their constant and often fruitless challenges to the feds, and Marshall in announcing his suit painted a hyperbolic picture of the ERA being used to enact a “far-left agenda” and “expand the frontiers” of what can be considered as gender-based discrimination.
However, we think this effort is on much more solid ground than some of those quixotic ones.
We’re not dismissing the reality - the absolute given - that men and women are equal and the law should recognize and treat them as such. The AP/NORC poll found bipartisan support for an ERA (90% of Democrats, 60% of Republicans).
We simply have trouble with changing the rules three decades after the fact to ensure an outcome that wasn’t achieved within the specified parameters. We would feel the same way about anyone pushing such a cause célébre, regardless of its significance to or the philosophies held by its advocates.
If there’s to be an ERA, its advocates need to start the process from square one. We think we’re in good company with that assertion; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, heroine to liberals and feminists, has said the same thing.
Online: https://www.gadsdentimes.com
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Feb. 27
Florence TimesDaily on Auburn University’s response to a fan’s conduct at a basketball game:
The Auburn men’s basketball team on Feb. 22 did what it seems to do best: rally from a halftime deficit to pull out an improbable win.
The No. 15 Tigers came back from what ultimately became a 17-point disadvantage to defeat the Tennessee Vols. Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl was ready to celebrate, and so were fans.
“We’ll celebrate this one,” Pearl said. “Having lost two in a row, I kind of felt like our backs were against the wall.”
That makes it all the more disappointing that Auburn’s comeback was marred by a disruptive fan.
A student was ejected after shouting, “Go back to Uruguay! This is America!” at Tennessee’s Santiago Vescovi, a native of the South American country.
According to The Associated Press, Pearl said after the game he appreciated the way Auburn administrators handled the situation.
“That’s not who we are at all,” Pearl said. “This is an amazing campus with incredible students. We are diverse and we are welcoming. I’ve got nothing but respect for Santiago and his game.”
Tennessee coach Rick Barnes was also satisfied with the university’s response.
“From what I’ve heard, once they found out about it, they took care of it,” Barnes said. “I’m glad they did. I haven’t given any thought to it, but our administration told me that Auburn did what needed to be done. And that’s good by me.”
Such outbursts of xenophobia are fortunately rare at U.S. sporting events. Other parts of the world are not so fortunate.
Racism and xenophobia are only too common, for example, at European soccer matches.
In January, officials suspended play during an English Premier League match between Chelsea and Tottenham after Antonio Rudiger, a black Chelsea defender, said Tottenham supporters were hurling racist chants at him.
The stop in play was the result of new protocol instituted by European soccer’s governing body in response to a rash of racist outbursts during the 2018-19 season.
Such incidents have become more common as more players from North Africa and the Middle East join the ranks of Europe’s elite soccer leagues. The remarks seem to reflect hostility toward the unrelated but simultaneous influx of migrants and asylum seekers from those same parts of the globe.
We are lucky in America that things are not as bad here.
“Go back where you came from” is never an appropriate response. We all came from somewhere, with ancestors in the recent or distant past who came to America in search of a better life rather than staying where they were and trying to fix things.
Hopefully, incidents like the one in Auburn will remain rare. The last thing we want is to become more like Europe and have to stop sporting events because of fans who are an embarrassment to themselves and the teams they claim to support.
Online: https://www.timesdaily.com
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Feb. 27
Decatur Daily on the legacy of NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson:
Katherine Johnson died Feb. 24 at the age of 101. She was the last of three mathematicians who helped send Americans into space at the dawn of the Space Age. Her colleagues, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, died in 2008 and 2005, respectively.
The three were all African American women working during a time of Jim Crow and casual sexism.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement on Feb. 24that Johnson “helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space even as she made huge strides that also opened doors for women and people of color.”
When Johnson started at NASA’s precursor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, she and other black women initially worked in a racially segregated computing unit in Hampton, Virginia. It wasn’t until the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1958 that the unit was integrated.
“Our office computed all the (rocket) trajectories,” Johnson said in an interview with The Virginian-Pilot in 2012. “You tell me when and where you want it to come down, and I will tell you where and when and how to launch it.”
In his song mocking German rocket scientist and Apollo visionary Wernher von Braun, Tom Lehrer sang:
Don’t say that he’s hypocritical
Say rather that he’s apolitical
”Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department” says Wernher von Braun
To be serious, that was Johnson’s department, and Johnson’s work was so well respected that at least one Mercury astronaut insisted she double-check the calculations of NASA’s new IBM 7090 computer.
“Get the girl to check the numbers,” John Glenn demanded before he was launched on the mission that would make him the third American in space and the first to orbit the Earth.
Johnson’s story, and that of Vaughan and Jackson, was eventually told in Margot Lee Shetterly’s 2016 book, “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race,” which became the basis of the Oscar-nominated film “Hidden Figures,” with Taraji P. Henson portraying Johnson.
Johnson’s story helps show that when the stakes are high enough, irrational prejudices cannot stand in the way, and beating the Russians in the Space Race was a high-stakes endeavor. But given the prejudice Johnson had to overcome just to get to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, it’s a small miracle America and the NASA astronauts didn’t miss out on her talents.
Prejudice based on race, sex, religion and national origin not only hurts its direct victims, but hurts all of us. We all lose out on what those people have to offer.
Economists call it “human capital,” and the late Julian Simon in particular called it the “ultimate resource.” Simon said the more people we have and the more we share ideas, the more brainpower can be brought to bear in solving the world’s problems.
It is no mere coincidence that the explosive improvements in living standards that started in the early 1800s coincided with mass publishing, mass education, mass communication (the telegraph) and much quicker travel made possible by the new steam engines. People on the move, sharing ideas, made the entire world richer.
Johnson’s example is a rare case where we can point to where we all might have missed out had the prejudices of the day won out.
Who knows what we are costing ourselves with every wall, real or metaphorical, we build today?
Online: https://www.decaturdaily.com
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