image from xfinity.comcast.net
Leonard Nimoy
March 26, 1931 -- February 27, 2015
This is a
description of the world as I knew it when Star Trek and its cast came into my
life. Leonard Nimoy’s death has given me an opportunity to think about how the
world was then and how it’s changed.
I grew up White,
Protestant, working class, in Oklahoma.
In 1966 I
graduated from high school. Most of my close friends had graduated the year
before and my college experiences started when they started college. With them
I met Black people and gay people for the first time. “People” isn’t exactly
the right word. I met one Black, lesbian woman. Her color was obvious. Her sexual
orientation was not, but she neither hid it nor announced it.
And “for the first
time” is wrong, too. I spent my first ten or eleven years in small Oklahoma
towns where segregation was a part of life. The schools were being integrated
one grade at a time beginning with the 12th grade and working its
way down. The towns still had “white” schools and “colored” schools. “Colored”
was considered the polite term by my parents. My grandparents used the “n”
word. I don’t remember anyone using the word Negro, except the news people on
TV. Our towns had one main street – two maybe three blocks long. Some of the
stores served White people and some served Black people. I was never in a “colored”
store. I’m sure there were Black people on the streets Saturdays, but I don’t
remember them. I think kids are just like that. All people belong to one of two
groups. They are either grown-ups or kids. And you don’t pay much attention to
grown-ups unless they’re kin or authorities. And kids are kids. Color,
religion, and language don’t much play into it.
There were very
few Catholics, no Jews, no Asians, and no Hispanics. A few people spoke with
accents mostly German accents, but they were grown-ups.
Before integration
got to the grade I was in, we moved into the Oklahoma City School District
which was segregated by residential practices. For those of you who don’t
remember that, it means Blacks were not allowed by custom to live in White
neighborhoods. No laws had to be enacted to enforce this type of segregation.
The general White public did it, some tacitly, some aggressively.
We had one Japanese
boy in our class. No other Asians, no Hispanics, and few Native Americans. (We
called them “Indians.” We didn’t realize there were any kind of Indians other
than Native Americans.) I had never eaten with chop sticks. I’d never eaten avocadoes.
And my grandmother’s idea of spaghetti was spaghetti stewed with tomatoes and
sugar served over mashed potatoes. Oregano was not in our lexicon. I did meet a
Jewish girl at Girl Scout Camp the summer after the sixth grade.
We were in a Cold
War with the Soviet Union and we lived near Tinker Air Force Base. We all knew
what number Tinker was on the Soviet hit list. We lived through the Cuban Missile
Crisis. Magazines had recipes for Jell-O salad and instructions for building a
bomb shelter.
When the Oklahoma
City School District was ordered to begin busing to integrate its schools, we
moved to a college town north of Oklahoma City. A White, college town. Only the
college was integrated and that not very much. Still no Black students in the
public schools.
It was then that
the ugliness of segregation struck me. Because it affected a fellow high school
student. He was a year ahead of me. He was bright and funny and kind. And while
in The City (that’s what we called Oklahoma City) he was refused service at a
lunch counter because they thought he was Black. His ancestors were Italian and
he was a life guard at the local swimming pool so he was dark-skinned. Somehow,
the fact that they treated him like he was Black when he wasn’t was not the
injustice for me. It was the fact that his dark skin could be used against him.
That the color of anyone’s skin could be used against them. That was the
injustice.
By the time I was
in college, I realized that injustice covered a much broader field than just
skin color. My friends who didn’t go to college because of finances or academic
indifference or legal entanglements were being sent to war. My friends who were
gay were being threatened. Black and White people were being killed because
they wanted to help Black people vote.
Then Star Trek hit
the airwaves. I could see on my little black and white TV screen all kinds of
people working together to explore and save the universe. There was a competent
Black woman, a half-Vulcan/half-Human man. There was a Japanese guy and a Russian.
A Russian good guy. And the combination of people was presented to us as
common-place, normal.
We’re part way
there. There have been great strides in civil rights in this country. In most
places we can be friends with, work with, live next-door to, and marry whomever
we choose. The Internet makes it possible to communicate across most borders
without needing permission. And in Space, we have the International Space
Station and her diversity-rich crews. There’s more to do. There’s always more
to do. But we truly are “going where no man has gone before.”
I know that
Leonard Nimoy was not Mr. Spock, but he gave life and legend to the character who
approached reality rationally and scientifically. His character was treated
with love and respect by the other characters showing how it could be among
humans (and part-humans.)
Nimoy’s family
will miss him, the man they knew. They will know on a daily basis that Leonard
Nimoy is gone. But us fans? We’ll soon forget that he is gone, because we’ll
continue to see him as we knew him – Spock. We’ll see him whenever we want to. Or
whenever we happen to. And he’ll continue to say to us “Live long and prosper.”
image from metalinjection.net
Mr. Spock
September 1967 -- Into the Future
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