LU students, for good or for bad?

By Darrell Laurant

Published: November 12, 2008

“Democracy used to be a good thing,” former North Carolina Senator Jessie Helms once declared, “but lately it has gotten into the wrong hands.”

I keep that statement in my toolbox of quotes, and it’s so telling that I can’t resist dragging it out every now and then.

The concern in some circles over 4,000-plus newly registered Liberty University voters is one of those times.

At least they didn’t shave off another area of Candler’s Mountain and insert the words: “Vote McCain.” Helms’ comment notwithstanding, though, what’s wrong with a bunch of people in one demographic group registering en masse? According to poll watchers in Lynchburg’s Ward II, a lot of young minority voters came out for the first time in support of Barack Obama.

Will the votes from this new infusion of LU students affect future City Council races? If it were any school other than Liberty, I’d say no. When I was in college in North Carolina, I had no idea who ran the government of “my” town. Nor did I care. I think most college students feel that way.

Then again, most colleges are far more diverse in political outlook than LU. There are Democrats on campus, and perhaps even (God forbid) liberals, but Liberty really was “McCain Country.”

However, as Lynchburg Vice-Mayor Bert Dodson pointed out, city council members don’t appoint Supreme Court justices or take stands on the abortion question. Certainly, they deal with issues that might directly affect Liberty University, but not the kind of issues that would impel LU students to take to the streets.

Also, council elections are held in spring, where thoughts of politics are usually far away.

It could be interesting. If nothing else, maybe the turnout for the next council election will top the usual 15 percent.

Obama represents the greater movement

Anyone who thinks the election of Barack Obama represented some miraculous change of heart by the American electorate hasn’t been paying attention.

What Obama did was close the deal, standing on the shoulders of 200 years of blacks and whites who pushed the agenda for equality forward. For that, he deserves a lot of credit.

Still, we seem to have this need to attach a single face to every social advance.

I think it’s safe to say that Rosa Parks wasn’t the first black bus rider to refuse to give up her seat. According to family lore, Lynchburg’s Anne Spencer took the same stand (or seat) on a local streetcar.

The Rev. Martin Luther King wasn’t the first black preacher to advocate racial equality from the pulpit. And Barack Obama wasn’t the first African-American to run for President.

Rather, they came along at just the right moment to light the kindling that had already been gathered and piled. In their time, the fire caught and spread.

One reason the United States has been able to overcome (or, at least, come to grips with) our internal squabbling is that we are, at bedrock, a nation of pragmatists.

Thurgood Marshall knew that when he brought suits against segregated school districts in the South in the 1950s. He wasn’t asking for integration, he told local officials, just for the “separate but equal” parity that had been promised. He would point to a gleaming new white high school on the outskirts of town and say: “That’s a nice school. We want one just like it.”

He knew, and they knew, that “separate but equal” was beyond the power of most local governments to grant. Thus, they were hung by their own language.

The increased visibility of black athletes has been credited with hastening social justice. But the teams that signed those players did so largely because they thought they could help them win.

Similarly, all those TV ads over the past 20 years in which every imaginable ethnic group is represented happened because the sponsors wanted to extend their reach to new customers.

For all his eloquence and charisma, Barack Obama would not have found himself in a position to gain the Democratic nomination if the party kingmakers didn’t think it was time.