I was born in 1961. It was a time when the country was segregated based upon ethnicity or economics. Women were denied equal rights in employment and education. My parents were denied the right of marriage in the state of Texas until the Supreme Court intervened in 1967.
I lived through the civil-rights era and stood witness to the rise of ethnic awareness and empowerment through the Chicano and Black Power movements. I stood with my mother at Equal Rights rallies and celebrated the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
I remember the impact of the assassinations of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., of Medgar Evers and Malcolm X on my parents. I remember the desegregation of the schools in the South. I remember Kent State and the Vietnam war protests.
I was raised with an awareness of history and a sensitivity to civic participation. I was gifted with a consciousness toward all of society and the power of voice and vote.
The battle for civil rights for minorities and women during my childhood were and continue to be hard-won. And, for reasons beyond the ken of the common person, they are being eroded by policies and practices by those professing longing for an era that never should have existed in the United States of America.
Make no mistake -- it is no small matter when people proclaim, "I want my country back" and pine for the 1950s. The "Leave It To Beaver" society reflects a time when racial and gender equality did not exist.
Public education was not the model for the nation. College education was beyond the reach of the middle class. The middle class was slowly growing and reached its peak in the late 1970s.
Since the mid-1980s, the size of the middle class has declined as the economic gap between rich and poor has grown.
Isn't it interesting to see the play-out of economic policies that celebrated global trade to the detriment of the national workforce and economy?
The policies that have led us to where we stand today have largely been the result of a political party that has retained a repressive grip on government for the last 40 years -- and would return us to policies that would socially bankrupt our future.
The intersection between politics and policy has always intrigued me, as has the lack of awareness of the average citizen. A teacher once told me that a student of history can stand witness to trends in society -- that lesson was never truer than it is today.
A current effort to disenfranchise voters, to return to policies of economic and geographic segregation, and the gradual erosion of civil and social rights is the danger America faces today.
A colleague recently shared her amazement at her daughter's ambivalence toward the threatened erosion of choice in women's health-care decision-making. Her comment was, "No woman would ever stand for that; there would be rioting in the streets." My friend expressed her fears that women would not riot in the streets but would silently accept the new "status quo."
And she is probably correct in her fear. Because those who wish for an era gratefully passed into history are the most vehement in their wish for the destruction of the rights we now enjoy. And they vote.
Prove them wrong.
Ouisa D. Davis is an attorney at law in El Paso. Email: Ouisadavis@yahoo.com