June 12, 2008 Issue

During the 1960s and ‘70s, the conservative battle cry was for “Law and Order.” As federal courts delivered landmark decisions that changed our country’s political and social landscape, right-wing pundits announced, “You can’t legislate morality.” The courts could strike down statutes that had permitted segregation for decades, but the judicial system couldn’t “change societal beliefs.”

I’m here to tell you they were wrong.

I’ve been to two graduations in the past month. My oldest daughter Leah graduated from the University of Alabama, not far from the school steps where George Wallace once stood so defiantly. There were thousands of kids getting degrees; with the job market so gloomy, there seemed to be an unusually large number of master’s degree candidates.

It was a diverse graduating class. The students represented lots of countries and as many different ethnicities as exist. Leah was excited that one of her classmates, Augustus Maiyo, a track star from Kenya, was joined by his family. They were the most colorful family at the graduation, in brightly colored traditional tribal dress.

Jane, my youngest child, graduated from Destin Middle School last week. Her class did not have students as geographically exotic as her older sister, but it was the most diverse graduating class that I have ever seen in Destin.

I can assure you that young people’s perceptions of their classmates—and of their world—have changed since the 1960s. The integration of our educational systems has caused America’s students to learn to live with different people from different backgrounds.

Students today are not unfamiliar with people of other races, religions, or sexual orientations. Consequently, they are not easily frightened of people who happen to be different.

That is why, even though there are older Americans who cannot believe that a black man is the odds-on favorite to be the next president of the United States, there are younger generations who think nothing of it.

John McCain and Barack Obama will present two entirely different programs in their campaigns for the presidency. McCain offers little hope, but lots of experience. His experience involves a lifetime of being in the military and the government. No wonder he has little hope.

Obama is full of hope. And why wouldn’t he be? A mixed race child raised by a single mother and caring grandparents, he made it through the best university in the country and is the front-runner for president. With a name like Barack Obama.

The most consistent rap on Obama is just that—he harbors too much hope. And that he is a “pretty talker.” Well, I’m sorry, but I’m ready for a pretty talker. Like many Americans, I’m also ready for some hope. The last six years of red, orange and yellow alerts, the airport shoe searches and confiscation of three-ounce shampoo bottles, and the fears that the “evildoers” are going to follow our soldiers home to Nebraska have gone on long enough.

I am optimistic and hopeful our next president will be capable of engendering hope not just in our country, but also around the world. And if he can string together a few grammatically correct sentences; that would be good, too.

More from Charles Morgan