The Catholic Weekly 5 July 2020

18 5, July, 2020 C omment catholicweekly.com.au ed from the rest of town. Grew tired of not being eligible for loans for houses in neigh- bourhoods where only white people lived. Like a pot on low heat, it took a while for the city to come to a boil. But on 27 May 1968, that’s what happened. A protest erupted after some bottles were thrown from the roof of a corner building, pop- ping on the pavement near a police car that had driven into the intersection. Seconds after the bottle shattered, bricks and rocks were thrown through nearby windows and by 9:30 p.m. that night, then-Mayor Kenneth Schmied was calling for the Difference between riots of then and now W e’ve all heard it – the more things change, the more they stay the same. But perhaps not this time. There is a great deal about the marches and protests, the violence, fires and looting that resemble marches and pro- tests, violence, fires and loot- ing of the past. Yet this time things seem different. This year’s protests began the way other protests began in years past. After wrongs and events yet again bring the nature of ra- cial disparities to the nation’s attention, the victims decide they’ve had enough and take to the streets. The police and sometimes the National Guardmove to break up the myriad of pro- tests throughout the nation, and leaders of cities seeing the protests blame the ensuing violence on those ubiquitous “outside agitators.” Events which led to recent local protests mirror simi- lar occurrences in other cit- ies – and in other times. In Kentucky, it was the 13 March shooting of Breonna Taylor, who had been asleep in her bed. In Atlanta, protests were triggered by the apparent vig- ilante slaying of Ahmaud Ar- bery and inMinneapolis it was the death of George Per- ry Floyd at the hands – and knee – of a police officer with a checkered past. We’ve all seen too much violence, too many wrongful deaths at the hands of a hand- ful of police, too much sense- less looting and destruction. And in some instances, we’ve seen history repeating itself. The Louisville riots of 1968 were the result of an open housing campaign that began two years earlier. The city’s Af- rican American community grew tired of being segregat- National Guard. When it was over, there had been 119 fires set, 472 people arrested, more than 50 people injured and two people killed. When violence broke out in Louisville again seven years later, in September of 1975, the cause was what protesters called “forced bussing,” a plan implemented by a federal court to desegregate Louisville and Jefferson County schools. The cause of the ‘75 riots to a large degree was caused by hate. Many white people in the suburbs didn’t want Black students bussed into their neighbourhood schools and they didn’t want their children sent across town to schools in Black neighbourhoods either. The protest led to a bizarre sit- uation. The white protesters hated not only the Black students but the police enforcing the busing order and the me- dia reporting on the events. It was a scary time. Shots were fired into the local daily news- paper’s offices; a Jefferson County police officer lost an eye when someone shot a ball bearing with a slingshot. Fires were set, glass was broken. Sound familiar? But this time seems dif- ferent. Sure, the senseless violence is a remnant of the past. But now there are huge, peaceful protests, too. And many of the faces in the crowd are young – and white. Deacon James Turner, from St Martin de Porres Parish in Louisville, sums up the differ- ence between “now and then” succinctly. “The older people know somewhat the history of their lives,” he said, and they know that society has been unwill- ing to confront that history. “The young people are look- ing more at what’s right and wrong. They see the injustices and they demand change.” Are we at a tipping point? Are racial relations about to improve and is racial injustice about to become part of our national history and not our national future? Both Pope Francis and Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville have called for an end to racism – the pope even called it a “pro-life issue.”The archbishop said we need to find a way to remove racism “from that block that exists right now, a block that is sadly in our hearts.” Leadership and laypeople agree that the church should be at the forefront of efforts to end racism. It should. And we should remember that we are the church. The above comment ap- peared on the website of The Record, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville, Kentucky. Demean humanities at our peril I f you would like a simple and clear artistic expres- sion of why the federal government’s proposed reform of university funding, especially the reduced sup- port for the humanities, is so wrong-headed, let me draw your attention to a fresco in Siena, Italy. After we defeat the Coro- navirus and lift the travel re- strictions, I recommend you see this artwork and appreci- ate why Humanities students must not—and will not—be bullied into dropping their in- terests for the sake of the gov- ernment’s presumed future job market. This fresco, in Siena’s Palaz- zo Pubblico— the city’s town hall, if you will, during the Renaissance— is known as The Allegory of Good and Bad Government . It was painted in the 1330s by Ambrogio Lo- renzetti and stretches across three adjoining walls. It was commissioned by the gover- nors of Siena and intended to be a reminder of their duties —perhaps something similar is needed in Canberra over- hanging the Cabinet room. The main fresco repre- senting good government contains one large allegori- cal figure; a male personifi- Allegory of Good Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 1338-1339. IMAGE:WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/PUBLIC DOMAIN A government in thrall to educational technocrats ultimately imperils our society and its foundations cation of the Common Good. He is surrounded by allegories of Peace, Bravery, Prudence, Magnanimity, Temperance, and Justice. Beneath him, the citizens of Siena carry intertwined cords, seemingly dispensed by Jus- tice, assisted by Wisdom and Harmony. The people are, in other words, united. The peo- ple of Siena also submit to the Common Good through the offering of taxes and trib- utes, even acknowledging that the nobles among them owe their positions of privilege to the city. Above them all, float rep- resentations of the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. The effects of a good government, observant of the virtues, is de- picted on an adjoining wall. Symbols of manufacturing, construction, trade, and civic harmony abound, as well as a peaceful connection between the people and their land. Bad government and its re- sults are depicted on the op- posing wall. Here, greed, lust, cruelty, andmaterial gain are evidently causing the destruc- tion of the virtues, including the death of Justice and the decay of the land. The mes- sage is abundantly clear: to achieve a peaceful, just de- mocracy, the virtues must be upheld and protected. The presence of Wisdom, floating above Justice, is es- pecially important in this respect, because it was well known during the Renais- sance that the study of Phi- losophy (the word literally translated from Latin as ‘love of wisdom’), was the pathway to personal growth, good gov- ernance, and civic harmo- ny. And to study Philosophy, meant pursuing the combi- nation of language, music, mathematics, rhetoric, and logic. These were the basics of an undergraduate career in the medieval universities, and remained so into the modern age. Central to these liberal arts, wasTheology. We find all these studies currently in our humanities departments and emphasised in our liberal arts colleges — yes, evenTheology, or at least some version of this which might come in the form of Re- ligious Studies —augment- ed by modern university dis- ciplines, such as History and Sociology. I don’t believe, in my lifetime, I’ve ever heard a Prime Minister or Education Minister, speak of the impor- tance of virtues in the study of the humanities and its positive effects on society. I did, however, recent- ly hear a recorded speech by Robert Menzies (founder of the modern Liberal Party that Scott Morrison now leads) in which he railed against job-fo- cused specialisation at uni- versity. The Prime Minister would do well to reflect on his pre- decessor’s message to the Headmaster of King’s School in Canterbury, UK: “When you sit down at the end of your academic year and contem- plate the past 12 months, your greatest pride will be to feel that you have helped to create a substantial group of civilised citizens.” These words should echo in the minds of Prime Ministers and EducationMinisters who dare to undermine the value of the humanities. If we continue to ignore the fundamental principles and importance of the humane sciences towards achieving good governance, this will only ultimately be to the per- il of our tertiary education system, and our society as a whole. Dr Boschiero is Dean of Studies at Campion College in Toongabbie Dr Luciano Borschiero Glenn Rutherford But this time seems different. Sure, the senseless violence is a remnant of the past. But now there are huge, peaceful protests, too. And many of the faces in the crowd are young -- and white.”