In February 2011, I was back in Texas for the second time since moving to Korea. At the baggage pickup area of the Austin airport, I saw an imposing statue of Barbara Jordan. When the facility opened in 1999, the passenger terminal was named after her. I had no problem with that decision. On the contrary, I have long felt deep respect for her.
Born in 1936 and raised in the segregated Fifth Ward of Houston, Jordan overcame numerous obstacles in a life of purpose and meaning. A participant in the civil rights movement, she graduated from Texas Southern and quickly got a law degree from Boston University. She had the gall—in the eyes of some at the time—to run for the Texas House of Representatives in 1962 and 1964. She lost in both instances but was elected to the Senate in 1966, and what a historic event that was. No black people had been elected to state government since the days of Reconstruction, and she was female to boot. Jordan was one of 31 members in Texas’ upper legislative chamber, and the other 30 were European-American males. She was new to the club, as it were, and some of her fellow solons might have preferred to keep things as they had “always” been. Jordan got along with them but also made it clear that she would be a force for change.
She served two terms there before winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives. While in Washington, Jordan played a major role on the House Judiciary Committee, culminating in President Richard Nixon's resignation over the Watergate scandal in the summer of 1974. She delivered an eloquent keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. She retired from politics three years later and began teaching at the law school of my alma mater, the University of Texas. Health problems (multiple sclerosis, to be specific) probably prevented her from being nominated to the Supreme Court. Prior to her death in 1996, Jordan was honored in a multiplicity of ways: several streets and schools are named after her; she won the Presidential Medal of Freedom; she was just the second female to be given the U.S. Military Academy’s Sylvanus Thayer Award; and she received 25 honorary doctoral degrees. Her funeral in Austin was a very big and solemn deal.
I admired Barbara Jordan, I respected her, and I have no doubt that her IQ was considerably higher than mine. Her life was notable for achievement after impressive achievement. She made few errors until, in my view, she had a doozy. I refer to the time Jordan responded to an interviewer’s question by saying, “I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have. He does not have it because he cannot have it. He’s just incapable of it.”
This is neo-sexism, pure and simple. Had such words been spoken by any number of radical feminist academics, they could be more easily dismissed. But was it really the view of the great Barbara Jordan? The woman who had overcome so many obstacles regarding race, gender and economic background? She said it and never issued a retraction or, for that matter, an apology to the three billion males on the face of the earth.
Let’s take a moment to deconstruct her statement. She said that men “structurally” lack understanding and compassion, traits that come naturally to women. All women, she inferred, are semi-angelic beings with hearts of gold. Some are and perhaps many are, but surely not all. Jordan’s words are much too easy to refute. Countless females seem to lack even a shred of understanding and compassion. (I have known quite a few myself.) How about Susan Smith, who locked her two young sons in a car and rolled it into a South Carolina lake in 1994?
Furthermore, Jordan posited that men—all men—are “incapable” of understanding and compassion. She seemed unaware of nuance, but I am not. I acknowledge that some/many males of the species are cold, cruel, selfish and just not very nice. But that certainly does not apply to all. Maybe Babs should have read her history and learned about guys like John Wooden, Nelson Mandela, Albert Schweitzer, Mohandas Gandhi and St. Francis. They and many other men are fully capable of understanding and compassion. I dare say they would understand and feel compassion for Jordan, who in this instance said something comically wrong. The fact that she was a closeted lesbian may have influenced her views, but I do not presume to know.
Now obviously, my name does not deserve to be mentioned along with those of Wooden, Mandela, et al., but there have been numerous times in my life when I displayed the very qualities Jordan insists I do not have because I cannot have them; it would be unseemly to offer specifics. My view of this great Texan, this great American, indeed this great human being is forever negatively influenced by her smug and idiotic words two decades back. Predictably, when I looked upon her statue in the Austin airport, I could only mutter, “neo-sexist!”
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