Two Good Public Things During My Adult Life

As I sit here on the last day of my 67^th year, I remind myself of two exceptional, revolutionary things that have happened during my adult life. Both have made a difference in my life, and both have made a difference in almost everyone’s life in the world.

1. The Beginning of the End of Patriarchy

Patriarchy is not dead. As a practice, it thrives in all areas of public life – government, employment, education, health, and religion. The idea of patriarchy as the appropriate way to organize power in everything from the family to society, however, has suffered many defeats over the last 60 years. It will not recover from these defeats, and it cannot reassert its former hegemony.

You might think that I would have mentioned the Civil Rights Movement as the one of the greatest changes for good in my adult life but I believe that that movement was well on its way to victory as the prevailing idea in educated society before 1960. With Martin Luther King, Jr. Day just having just passed, I would like to say – as both a U. S. citizen and as an American historian – that I believe King to be the greatest figure in American History. I say this because I believe that his philosophical and religious approach to civil rights won the victory for equal civil rights and propelled forward the movement for women’s rights and even the rights of the poor. The Civil Rights Movement was, therefore, antecedent to, and necessary for the women’s rights movement and the youth movement, both of which together provided the earliest assaults on patriarchy.

When we think of patriarchy, some of us probably think of fathers who governed their families, men who were usually, though not always, benevolent despots. Robert Young’s portrayal of the head of his household in “Father Knows Best” is the iconic symbol of that soft-patriarchy. Fortunately, my brother and my sister and I, growing up in a very equalitarian home in which the civil equality of Blacks and indeed of all people was assumed without question, did not experience any discomfort from patriarchy since our father never claimed that special status for himself. Almost all of the modern families I know today reveal few traces of patriarchy.

It is more likely, nowadays, to associate patriarchy with male domination and the suppression of women. With the rise of feminism in the 1960s, males of all types were identified as the impediment to progress, and the subsequent history of the women’s movement since then needs no repeating. Women still have less power, still have to outperform men, are still paid less than men, and so on, but equality is only a matter of time; progress toward the equality of men and women will not stop. Women now receive nearly equal education to men, and the recent economic downturn in the U. S. has resulted, ironically, in more men unsuccessfully seeking employment than women unsuccessfully seeking employment. That anomaly is only slightly the result of women receiving less pay for the same work.

It is often forgotten that the end of patriarchy has also benefited men as well. I will use myself as an example. When I went to graduate school, I was told that I would doing so, and told where I was going to go to school, by the head of the history department at Western Michigan. I do not begrudge this since I did, of course, have the choice of going to graduate school or not (although he seemed to make it clear that his decision was close to an order). When I got to graduate school at Wayne State, it did not take long to realize that the head of the department was a demi-god. He was in fact the perennial “head” of the department, and I do not believe he relinquished that post until he died. Older, more senior faculty members (all but one was a man) controlled all of the sources of power that were not monopolized by the head of the department. Junior faculty kow-towed or risked being driven out. Graduate students were even more subservient. Faculty did not collaborate with their students on research. Historical conferences were places where the “big men” of their fields gave papers, and commented on other people’s papers. Today, even undergraduates are often invited to join in a professor’s research project, and to publish papers. Conference presentations and commentaries are now almost exclusively the domain of young people who have new ideas about their subjects. Women are approaching equal status in grad schools. Older faculty members are now respected, if at all, for their experience, but for little else. Heads are now chairs -- persons who serve limited terms, and have limited powers.

Patriarchy is not just about male domination of women; it is about the domination of everyone by older males. Yet, even mullahs in remote regions of Afghanistan or Pakistan are now faced with recalcitrant young women who want to learn. Increasingly, they must accommodate these young women. So, the legitimacy of patriarchy has diminished as the idea of fundamental human equality has risen.

2. The Internet

The importance of the internet in changing nearly everything needs no repetition either. It is a lovely irony that an instrument designed to aid the military has become an instrument to undermine those who hold power in autocratic status as a consequence of their militaries. And, as democracy fades in the halls of governments almost everywhere, it is a happy fact that the internet enhances democratic feelings and ideas among ordinary people almost everywhere.

It only seems like yesterday that a colleague and I attended a conference in Toronto about the relationship of computers to the humanities. At the conference, we were treated to a presentation by a man who explained how a system was in place -- a system that would rapidly expand, he noted -- that allowed a person to send a message to someone else through a computer linked to an “internet” in which bundles of messages were sent at the speed of light to remote servers that distributed these messages to individuals. This was in 1980. It was like telling folks in the 16^th century about jet aircraft.

In 1994, while on a research trip to Massachusetts, June and I were joined by our oldest son, Nathaniel. During a long drive home from an expedition to the ocean, we began to talk about the internet. June and I were speculating on the possible need for governance of the internet for moral purposes, etc. Nat was outraged. For two hours, he tried to convince us of the error of our ideas. Censorship as a means of attacking a few bad things failed to offset the openness of the internet, Nat argued, and its primal democratic nature and its liberating potential should not be impeded. I say today: Nathaniel – you were absolutely right and we were absolutely wrong. The recent conflict over Google’s threatened removal from China again heightens the remarkable importance that the internet holds for the entire world. Beyond that, the recent move by Google to digitize as much of the world’s literature as possible – whatever any of may think about the legal and moral problems inherent therein -- makes the internet the most revolutionary instrument in the history of humankind.

Because the internet now refers to so many things – ideas, information, communication, commerce, religion, and politics – it may have lost some of its singular stature over time, but it still remains those bundles of information shooting off in all directions, accessible to an increasing number of people world-wide. For that I am thankful.