You gotta know when to walk away

My senior "capstone" class in college, to earn my biology degree, was Ecology. While not formally so, I considered the final paper that I wrote in that class to be my senior thesis, as I leveraged the scientific and research knowledge that I had honed over the previous four years.

The paper, which explored the validity of anthropogenic global warming theory, received an A-minus, which made me quite proud, as I had put countless hours into it. My father, now retired from the coal industry, shared it with one of his colleagues, who agreed that it was well-written, though lacking in one key area: the epilogue.

I had chosen to include a final commentary on the topic to make my views on the state of global warming science known, because it did concern me deeply, as a budding scientist (I have since moved on to other, better suited endeavors). But this epilogue was, quite truly, the one weak area of my paper, and I regret having included it. It morphed my thesis from something to be considered with seriousness to something less credible, as it added subjectivity to a data-driven work.

So it was, today, with the benediction delivered at the inauguration of America's 44th President, Barack Obama. The reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights leader and wholly appropriate choice for delivering the final prayer, was on target and moving, and his prayer would have been spot on were it not for that final thought.

"Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen."

I'm sure he was trying genuinely to inject his own commentary on the state of race relations in our country, and perhaps provide a final verbal nail in the coffin of the whole sordid subject, but this is not the way to do it.

I wasn't aware that blacks were still asked to "get in back." That Native Americans were still being held back, systematically. That Asians were angry. That I, a white man, haven't yet embraced what is right.

With this cutesy, superfluous epilogue of his own, Reverend Lowery managed to inject the thing that was rightly absent from today's ceremonies and hopefully stamped out by the election of the first black president.