By Antonio D. French
Filed Thursday, December 1 at 6:50 AM
December 1, 2005 -- Fifty years ago today, a 42-year-old Southern black woman made a decision to no longer be a party to her own disrespect. Rosa Parks said “no” to the question of her inferiority. She said “no” to her state-imposed invisibility. She said “no” to giving up her seat on a city bus, deciding that her own feelings of inconvenience and fatigue were no less valid than that of the white man that wanted her seat.
Today in St. Louis, buses will carry the message “Rosa Parks Day” to commemorate this woman’s inspiring act. Since her death a few weeks ago, the legend of Rosa Parks has grown to new levels with everyone from President George W. Bush to a group of disgruntled local contractors attempting to stand on the shoulders of this American icon.
But it is important to note, for the sake of completely understanding the nature of her act of defiance, that 2005 is not 1955, that “being a Rosa Parks” today means something very different in today’s America than it did for the actual woman.
“Being a Rosa Parks” today is done largely without the fear of lethal retribution that the actual woman must have feared in the South of 1955. Being the target of a deadly terrorist attack was something that Rosa Parks and her family must surely have feared, not in the detached, abstract way that we in St. Louis think about it, but in the manner of a people with fresh images of Emmett Till’s mutilated body burned into their minds.
Today in St. Louis, such a scenario involving the mistreatment of a large group of people by a bus service, or large corporation, or governmental entity, culminating in a single act of civil disobedience would likely be soon dispelled with a quiet undisclosed settlement to the individual and a cushy job offered to activist preacher or attorney that took up her cause.
Our Rev. Kings and Atty. Thurgood Marshalls are replaced by preachers that without apparent reservation accept gifts and jobs from the very wolves they are supposed to be defending their flock from. All the while, they claim the honor of “being a Rosa Parks.”
There was only one Rosa Parks. Any attempts to use her image in today’s political environment only acts to cheapen her act of inspirational defiance.
But that ship sailed decades ago and there is no calling it back.
The downside of lionizing people is that they soon become cartoons, symbols for larger issues and different agendas. We forget that Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali were among the most hated men in America and they lived with the real threat of death or harm, not just to them but also to their families. We turn them into symbols for good and forget that doing the right thing comes with risk.
Without that full appreciation of risk and consequences, we accept false Rosas and forget what true leadership even looks like.
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