Viewpoint

By Robert Barber, AICP

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott created a furor with his recent comments, which seemed to express nostalgia for Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist bid for President. Lott's comments suggested a lack of perspective on the nation's struggles with racism. They also seemed to dismiss many productive years and wrenching effort in the cause of racial justice on the part of many Southerners. The AICP Commission displayed real leadership by quickly condemning the remarks and reminding us that the profession is duty-bound to ensure that the goals of racial equality are diligently pursued.

My peers, a generation of 40-somethings, were not yet born when the South began its civil rights struggles in the mid-1950s. Our memories generally extend only to the most intense of those struggles, prompted by the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. By that time the verdict was already in: The Dixiecrat South would no longer be permitted to perpetuate the officially sanctioned and oppressive policies of racial segregation. By the time we started grade school, the nation was struggling to implement a host of initiatives intended to advance racial equality, initiatives that would have very dramatic implications for planning decisions.

Even if my generation was not an eyewitness to the most intense racial conflict, the burden of Southern history is no less real. The region's strong storytelling tradition keeps alive the memories of past deeds, both dastardly and kind, to the degree that the past, in the Southern mind, is quite often a present reality. In the South, as writer William Faulkner once said, "The past is never dead. It isn't even past."

So it is that we Southerners are keenly aware that our region has harbored, and too often nurtured, more than its quota of rascals. We know the whole world is watching as we work toward a more just order, and that it is ready to cast stones at the slightest hint of trouble. Sen. Lott's comments disappoint those of us who have worked hard to rectify the excesses and injustices of our region.

As a profession that strongly affects the nation's public life, planning has a particular responsibility to pursue the goal of racial equality. Southern planners deal daily with the lasting effects, economic and political, of an era of official segregation. They understand well their obligations as members of APA and AICP to work toward the resolution of these issues. And many of the initiatives aimed at bringing about greater equality of opportunity in planning and development have had real, even dramatic, results: more equal housing opportunities, broadly shared economic development, and the systematic inclusion of minorities in public decision making.

My native Mississippi is a leader in this regard. The state has elected more minority officials than any other state. It also has a good record of minority appointments, including the chair of the planning commission that I direct. Formerly segregated neighborhoods in many instances have become vitally diverse communities. My own neighborhood in a small northern Mississippi community represents a broad range of ethnic backgrounds. Minority membership is high in the APA chapters in this and other Southern states. Every day, Southern planners are called upon to weave the fragments of past separation into an edifying mosaic that speaks to the hopes and dreams of all.

I am certainly not suggesting that the South is problem-free. But Sen. Lott's comments reflect neither the spirit nor the reality of the South, or of Southern planning as it is practiced today. His comments do, however, in their crude manner, serve as a reminder that America cannot be complacent about its promise of freedom and justice for all and that there is still work to be done.

Robert Barber, AICP, is the planning director of Hernando, Mississippi, and chair of APA's Chapter Presidents Council.