Canadamaintaineditstraditionsingulfwarfootnote.html *In one of those frequent in recent years fiftieth anniversary celebrations of some aspect of World War Two and its byproducts, 1997 saw Vancouver hosting an anniversary of the date, in 1947, when Chinese-Canadians were first given the vote.
I suspect if i didn't, in the "context" of this page's subject matter, provide a link here to what you'll find if TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE, i would in future have to respond to allegations of disrespect for my stated"enormous and undying respect for my parents" and "our family('s) long and unwavering 'commitment' to the 'principles' in human relations that apartheid systematically opposes" and which was at the heart of why World War Two was fought.
Need i remind you of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien's remark, during his summit meeting last year with U.S. President Bill Clinton, of how much the two of them admire Harry Truman, U.S. President between 1944 and 1953?
When i see a person who should know better say things like how embarrassed he is because "(his) people", Catholics and Protestants, have been fighting for years, i knew i'd have to add what you'll find if you TAKE ANOTHER BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE.
It's not 1947, but i still have to deal with people that are the subject of "Science Fiction".
This is why i took about 3 months to research and prepare it.
These people seem almost to a one to live their lives oblivious to the fact that their life experiences are not the same as other people's, and thus, they have "Nothing Of Value" to teach other people to help make this a better world for "all of us".
Perhaps the "best" way to illustrate this is to remind people here that when Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in 1963, the American civil rights movement led by the late Martin Luther King, had not yet taken place. If he were denied access to news of progress after he was imprisoned until he was released in 1991--what would his opinion of America be?
Think about the underlying point i'm making here after you've surfed this website's contents and evaluate how much of them you already knew...and ultimately decide you would need to know if you want to adequately understand the complexities of the West's relationships with Iran and Iraq (and i anticipate the relationship with Libya coming up again soon). Need i point out here that the ultimate forms of those relationships may well determine how many more World Trade Center or Alfred Murrah Building bombings we have to witness as CNN "Breaking News"?
Only in January, 1998 did i borrow from a Vancouver public library the videos of director and writer George Stevens, Jr.'s 1991 film, "Separate But Equal", about Thurgood Marshall's 1954 challenge of the segregated American education system to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Obviously this was not one of those cases where, like in a Perry Mason book or television program, at the last minute private investigator Paul Drake comes into the court, he huddles with Perry, and the attorney recalls a witness previously cross-examined and confronts him/her with some startling piece of evidence that the police investigation had not uncovered.
Real life rarely provides 30 previously undisclosed photographs of shoes to challenge the honesty of earlier evidence.
Almost a century went by between when the U.S. Civil War supposedly freed the slaves and made American black people equal under the law with white people and when the man who was later in his life to become a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and his team of researchers and advisers brought their case, Brown vs. Board of Education, before the American judicial system's highest level of appeal.
There are three scenes in the two video-length movie that captured my attention.
In one, to prove that the separate education systems are having a deleterious effect on the blacks, tests are conducted on negro children in which they are shown dolls indicative of different racial origins and they are asked which is good, which is bad, and which one would they most like to be? It was heartbreaking watching the scenes of little children being "embarrassed" by their skin colour and declaring their preference for the pink-skinned dolls.
In the second key scene, working long hours into the night at the expense of their personal lives, the late American civil rights champion's team finally finds a term of reference, in a record of the U.S. Congress debate on the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which initially established the state-run separate school systems for blacks and whites), stating:
"Where any state makes distinctions between different classes of individuals, congress shall have the power to correct such discriminations and inequality. No distinction would be tolerated in this purified republic but what rose from merit and conduct."
This seemed, to Thurgood Marshall and his team, to be the key evidence they would need to encourage the reversal of the inequitable systems. But it was not enough.
Scene after scene in the movie dramatizes the agonizing of the American court justices as they sought to grapple with the shortcomings in American history of the system in facing its inherent race problem. (I might suggest you TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE to see how i drew attention to a strikingly similar issue in the Canadian judicial system case over my "International Diplomatic Work...on a direct basis." I had previously quoted Edmund Burke's analysis that:
"Politics deals with men and nations in actuality; never in bloodless abstractions.")
The third scene that i will remember from George Stevens, Jr.'s movie is one in which actor Richard Kiley, playing the part of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, is seen annotating a passage in a book he is studying in reviewing the appeal. He circles this passage:
"These infant appellants are asserting the most important claims that can be put forward by children, their claim to the full measure of the chance to learn and grow, and the inseparably connected but even more important claim to be treated as entire citizens of the society into which they've been born."
...As i point out in the footnote to page 4. of "Science Fiction", and of course in "Science Fiction" itself (particularly in the quote of J.M. Roberts, Jr.'s 1950 "open letter" on page 8. of it, there is a "debt" that has to be paid to continue what we have and enjoy.
My point is that i don't care if people, entering the later stages of their lives, spend a lot of time reminiscing about "the good old days." I just hope they will appreciate that what were "the good old days" to them were not necessarily "the good old days" to many others.
I might add here that my Mother, when she used to write me and wanted me to know that she and my Father were in such a state of mind (yet were respectful of the vulnerability i have to "people obsessed with the past or indiscriminate in their attitudes" as a result of the 1972 car accident), simply wrote me in her letters saying so, and we proceeded to lead our individual lives on separate but equally valid bases with mutual respect for our differences.
I have no "embarrassment" about "my people," as a result.
And when i deal with immigrants to this country in the "New World", i inevitably recall the classic Jimmy Buffett song with its lines:
"It's these changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes,
Nothing remains quite the same.
After all of our running and all of our cunning,
If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.
If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."
--from "Changes In Latitudes Changes In Attitudes" by Jimmy Buffett,
copyright 1977 by Coral Reefer Music and Outer Banks Music,
All rights administered by Coral Reefer Music

This is one of those cases where i believe i've heard the "best" answer to a problem expressed, and i don't expect it to be expressed better in future.
For me--and i suspect for the majority of immigrants to this "New World" (whether Ellis Island belongs to New York or New Jersey) who have their individual nightmares to tell to explain why they're here and not with, say, their "people"--i think this is another case where a frequently stated Ronald Reagan line is appropriate:
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Do i really have to add here that the term, "insane," is a legal term--a lawyers' word, if you will--not a medical description?


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