Did you happen to watch the episode of The American Experience aired on PBS last night? It was about Robert F. Kennedy. It was excellent, overall. I am astounded that after 38 years, my sense of grief, of loss, and of having seen the death of hope in America is still so palpable, such a punch in the gut.
Yes, I was in tears by the end.
As I have said before, John F. Kennedy's assassination was the first body blow that knocked the wind out of the collective American body; the twin killings in 1968 of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and of Bobby Kennedy comprised the knockout punch, the death blow to fundamental American optimism--to hope for the future, to the expectation that things really would keep getting better, to the idea that we could make the world a better place for everyone, not just those already priviledged with wealth and power.
One of the ironies of Bobby Kennedy's life and death is that his brother's assassination made Bobby a better person [probably even better than his brother--Ed.]. His grief opened not just his mind, but his heart, to the needs of the disenfranchised and dispossessed, and compelled him to speak out against injustice, including America's ever-escalating presence in Vietnam. Eisenhower sent the first advisors; JFK sent more; JFK's hand-picked successor, Lyndon Johnson, made it a conflagration. Bobby, an ardent anti-Communist, at first supported Johnson's policies, but as the war dragged on and our entanglement worsened, he came to realize it was a mistake . . . and frequently wondered whether John, had he lived, would have been wise enough to see that and pull America out before it was too late.
We'll never know. I am somewhat chagrined to say that I doubt it--for it took the constant fruitless escalation to demonstrate the error of being there in the first place. The overarching great shame of the entire fiasco is that Ho Chi Minh came to America after WWII hoping for our assistance in throwing out the French colonial power. He was a nationalist. He became a communist only because we rejected his request in favor of our "ally," France. [And we all know how helpful France has been since, don't we?--Ed.]
One of the other ironies of Bobby's life is that it took his brother's death for Congress to pass John's Civil Rights Act. The national outpouring of grief in the wake of JFK's senseless death propelled Congress to pass the bill that had been languishing in the national legislature for several months before Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger 3 times in Dallas in November, 1963.
An additional irony is that just as "only Nixon could go to China," only a Southerner could get meaningful civil rights legislation passed, and Texan Lyndon Johnson used his prodigious political skill to push the bill to passage.
Johnson was often a despicable human being, but it is still a shame that Vietnam became the bete noire of his presidency; he actually accomplished great things in domestic policy and legislation . . . but it's all been underappreciated in the wake of Vietnam. [Not that the same could be said for Dubya. His domestic policy seems to consist of undoing everything good done in the past 40 years . . . and if his misadventure in Iraq minimizes historical recognition of that, all the worse for us. It was breathtaking how relevant what Bobby said against the war in Vietnam still sounds today. If you didn't watch The American Experience episode last night, please be sure to watch it when PBS airs it again. It's well worth your two-hour investment.--Ed]
As engrossing and instructive as the episode was, however, I do have a quibble. In discussing Bobby's growing recognition of American racial injustice, Nicholas Katzenbach (long-time member of the Kennedy inner circle) tried to demonstrate how limited RFK's initial understanding was by saying "Bobby used to compare the discrimination against blacks to, to [sic] the 'No Irish wanted.' And you know, that that [sic] was a wrong, a wrong comparison; one, I think, that was actually resented by blacks, despite the fact that he meant it well."
If Katzenbach meant Bobby was wrong in the long term, he is correct. The Irish, after all, eventually could assimilate, unlike blacks, whose mere skin color prevented them from doing the same no matter how much time passed.
If Katzenbach meant Bobby was wrong to make the comparison at all, however, Katzenbach himself is in error. I have seen editorial cartoons and commentaries dating to the early 19th century that clearly show the Irish as being, in the opinion of the WASPs in America and the English in the UK, just as ape-like and primitive as any black was seen to be. In their oversized upper lips, their knuckle-dragging posture, their low foreheads, their tendency to be lazy, drunk, and overly aggressive, the Irish as drawn in the cartoons and discussed in the commentaries were as black as blacks . . . except in skin-color. Were you to see one of these scurrilous cartoons with the caption removed and the skin-color indeterminate, you'd interpret it as anti-black, too.
As I said, however, it's a quibble. In its entirety, the program was stunningly evocative of a time and place too many Americans nowadays wrongly think is irrelevant. Please take the time to watch it when PBS airs it again. You will not regret it.
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