When I was growing up, every woman who raised me, taught me, guided me, and loved me was born into a country that did not trust her with the right to vote. African Americans were being lynched and subjected to state-sponsored segregation and disenfranchisement. Members of what we now call the LGBTQ community were nearly always referred to by the vilest of slurs, and the vast majority of them remained hidden—to society and often to themselves. People with physical challenges were pitied, but there was no systematic effort to change public buildings, transportation, sidewalks, or anything else to make the world easier for them to navigate. Jews were barred from many corridors of power. At colleges and universities, there were all sorts of restrictions on race and religion, never mind gender. Some of these were explicit and some were just understood.
America was a place where the privilege conferred on white, Protestant, straight, nondisabled men was not even questioned. This privilege remains strong today, but it now must compete with a growing chorus calling for a fairer, more inclusive nation. Legally and socially, we have made great progress, even if the summit of true equality and justice remains distant.
We often hear about how we need to be more tolerant: to make room for people, ideas, and actions with which we may not agree. This is a prerequisite for a functional democracy. But tolerance alone is not sufficient; it allows us to accept others without engaging with them, to feel smug and self-satisfied without challenging the boundaries within which too many of us live. A society worthy of our ideals would be a much more inclusive one, a more integrated one. It would be a place where we continually strive to create a better whole out of our many separate parts. This is a sentiment that itself stretches back to our founding. Our first national motto was E pluribus unum, “From many, one.” From many states, we are one nation. And from many peoples, we should be one society. Under this framework, building tolerance is a worthy way station to a much grander destination of inclusion. This is a journey that is in our power as a nation to make. I know this to be true, because a journey from intolerance to tolerance to inclusion is one that many have made, myself included.
Back in my childhood, the idea of an African American or a woman as president was a concept so completely implausible that my peers and I never even bothered to talk about it. By the 1960s, however, the tectonic plates of American society were shifting, and I remember reporters, over adult beverages, occasionally debating whether the United States would ever have a black or female president. The consensus was a very slight maybe, some time, but none of us expected to live to see the day. It still seemed unlikely or at least in a distant future, sort of like colonizing Mars. As I look back now, it strikes me how these conversations were almost always conducted by white males only, as we made up the vast majority of the working press at the time. But in the 1960s and into the 1970s, that started to change as well. And with it, the idea of an African American or female president began to seem even more tangible. Familiarity is a necessary ingredient for acceptance.
But there was one marginalized group for whom there was almost no sense of a path to progress. If you had told us back in the 1960s and 1970s that there would be legal gay marriage in all fifty states, we would have been stunned. This was a notion that probably didn’t enter even the deepest reaches of our subconscious, let alone bubble to the level of an actual concrete thought we could put into words. You couldn’t ignore that there were women or African Americans in society, but you certainly could ignore the presence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, who most often were closeted. That such people would one day be open members of society, living with pride and having children and legal marriages? It is impossible for me to adequately convey how utterly alien those notions would have seemed.
It may be difficult for some younger readers to imagine, but for most of my life the LGBTQ community was never discussed in “polite” company. Horrible epithets for gay people were bandied about without a second thought. The very theoretical idea of someone “like that” living in your neighborhood, let alone teaching your children, was seen as a perverted threat to society. It is hard now to think back to how much this malignant ideology crossed almost all political, religious, racial, and gender boundaries. If you had asked my younger self what I thought about gay rights, I am not sure exactly what I might have said, but I am sure I would not be proud of it today. The fact that most of my peers—and even many leading progressive voices at the time—felt the same way might explain, but does not excuse, my former perspective.
In 1967, two years before the Stonewall riots in New York City would bring gay rights to national prominence, CBS News aired a documentary hosted by Mike Wallace called The Homosexuals. It had been years in the making and was considered one of the most controversial issues a news division could touch. The report was filled with the tropes of the times: psychiatrists claiming homosexuality was a mental condition, provocative images of hustlers, and interviews with gay Americans in anonymity, including one man with his face behind a potted plant. Wallace could state without controversy that “most Americans are repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality.” He added, with a tone of journalistic certainty, “The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in, nor capable of, a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. His sex life, his love life, consists of a series of chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits.”
I raise this not to take particular exception with Mr. Wallace. It was brave to even tackle the subject then, and the program also included sympathetic interviews with gay men talking publicly to a national audience for the first time. But the final product did not escape the deep prejudices of the times, and sadly, this ethos continued for years. When members of the gay community started getting sick with a mysterious cancer in 1981, it didn’t gain much notice. At CBS, we were one of the first news organizations to cover it, but we were still too late. At the national level, President Ronald Reagan wouldn’t even utter the word “AIDS” for years. Our job as reporters, and the job of political leaders, is to confront hard truths without bias or prejudice. Unfortunately, the stigmas surrounding gay people and intravenous drug users, the two groups that initially suffered most, shaped the response from all of us.
We knew how big a story AIDS was, but there was an effort among journalists from all walks to “broaden” the reporting. When Ryan White, a young hemophiliac from Kokomo, Indiana, was diagnosed with AIDS after a blood transfusion, the disease took on a more sympathetic face for the press. It hurts my heart to write these words and think of all the thousands of gay men who suffered and died before and since. Many lived under a cloud of shame, shunned by former friends and family. In 1986, a team of reporters, including myself, did a one-hour special called AIDS Hits Home. It was certainly far from perfect, but it was an improvement over The Homosexuals from twenty years earlier. I remember interviewing a mother alongside the gay lover of her now dead son. You couldn’t hear the story without being moved. But as I look back now, the subtext was that America should care more broadly about AIDS because it was no longer just a gay disease. It could infect you as well. Those were the times in which we were living, and we were not sensitive. It does bring some comfort to know that no one would cover the story in the same way today.
This societal change regarding LGBTQ rights continues to our present time. It’s important to remember that as late as the Democratic primaries in the 2008 election, neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton would publicly support same-sex marriage. Either they still had to “evolve” on the issue or it was considered too politically toxic. Both are now solidly pro – gay marriage, as is almost the entirety of the Democratic Party, and even many Republicans. The key, I think—and it is not a novel or original idea—is that our progress with LGBTQ rights is due to greater inclusion with the rest of society. We know that homosexuality is not limited to any race, religion, or socioeconomic class—it is part of human diversity. Once people had the courage and support to come out of the closet, families across the country, rich and poor, black and white, rural and urban, were forced to confront what had long remained hidden: sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, best friends, coworkers, even fathers and mothers, turned out to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and transgender. Now how will you respond? Will you shun them? Many did, and do, and the trails of pain, loneliness, depression, and even suicide are long and shameful. The tally of those rejected and disowned is large, and continues to grow. But thankfully many people decided to continue to love those whom they had already loved. They made room in their moral universe not only to tolerate LGBTQ people, but also to include them.
Like so many others in our country, I journeyed from ignorance to tolerance to inclusion. By the late 1990s, I had come to realize the undue challenges facing gay and lesbian people in American society, but the true burden many of them faced hadn’t fully struck me. And then one day I was sitting in my office at CBS News when a longtime close colleague came in and shut the door, saying that he needed to talk to me. As soon as he sat down, he blurted out, “I’m gay.” I saw in his eyes an anxiety I hadn’t ever seen during our years of working together, even on the most dangerous or difficult assignments. In that moment I understood the courage it must have taken him to tell me this, and the energy he must have had to expend over the many years we had known each other to keep this central part of his life hidden.
I assured him that what he’d told me wouldn’t change our relationship as coworkers and friends. As we spoke, I could see his whole demeanor shift, as if a tightly wound spring was finally allowed to relax. How can people be so blinded by prejudice as to not see the common humanity? Thankfully, we have, as a nation and as individuals, made meaningful steps in the right directions. We must be vigilant and keep up the momentum, and there are new threats in the moment and on the horizon. Sadly, we have seen a growing movement of religious objections to same-sex marriage, with business owners denying service to gay customers. Transgender people, in particular, have not benefited from the same level of inclusion as gays and lesbians. And racial minority members of the LGBTQ community face extra levels of discrimination. But so many organizations and businesses—from the military, to government, to our major corporations—have been integrated with gays and lesbians living openly. Our society has been changed forever, and we are a stronger and more just nation because of it.
Inclusion on race has been a very different journey, and I worry that for all the progress we have made, we are stuck in the purgatory of tolerance. This may not be a comfortable thought for many who pride themselves on their progressive beliefs, but it is the truth. We have of late seen evidence of a great racial divide that remains, and in some ways even appears to be expanding, more than a half century after the major legislative victories in the civil rights movement. While tragedies like the high-profile shootings of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement get a lot of deserved attention, these are symptoms of a much deeper problem. We are still largely segregated as a society, and our political divisions increasingly fall along the lines of race. The Republican Party has become whiter and more conservative, and the Democrats have become more diverse and progressive. This shapes not only how African Americans sort politically, but increasingly Hispanics and Asians too. Yes, we saw a historic moment in the 2008 election with our first African American president, but how distant all the talk of a “post-racial America” seems today. The election of President Barack Obama was a mark of progress, but the racist and demeaning comments from some of his critics (like the lies about his birth certificate) during his presidency highlighted the intransigent lines of division that remain within our society. This environment has only intensified since President Obama left office, as a political climate of greater polarization now emanates from the highest levels of government. The long shadow of slavery, segregation, and racism still looms over this nation.
Several years ago I worked on a documentary on the public school system of Detroit. The city has become a potent symbol of so many of the challenges that face this country, race being first and foremost. But for the children growing up in the poverty and hopelessness of much of Detroit today, symbolism doesn’t matter. This is their one and only chance at a life, and the historical, political, sociological, psychological, legal, and other headwinds they face seem disproportionate and cruel. The documentary found a broken city of families struggling against the odds of deserted neighborhoods, inadequate public transportation, and low-paying jobs. Meanwhile the school system has been plagued by corruption and mismanagement.
Amid all this, one truth cannot be ignored: The Detroit public schools are almost entirely African American, and the schools in the surrounding suburbs are overwhelmingly white. This is not an accident. In 1974, the Supreme Court heard a case that centered on Detroit’s schools, both in the city and in the surrounding communities. In Milliken v. Bradley, the court ruled in a 5 – 4 decision that a metropolis could in essence be segregated along district lines, just not within those districts. In other words, it was okay if there were real racial divisions, lines of exclusion, between suburbs and cities. And that is the system we largely have today. When you hear the term “inner-city schools,” close your eyes and picture the student body. Now picture a suburban school. I am pretty sure that race was part of your mental image. This is not a mirage. Recent governmental and academic studies have shown increased de facto school segregation in the last few decades. In a blistering dissent to the Milliken decision, the first African American justice on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall, predicted our current reality: “School district lines, however innocently drawn, will surely be perceived as fences to separate the races.” We have become a less inclusive nation as a result.
In our reporting for the documentary, I interviewed a remarkable young woman named Deanna Williams, who was a high school student at the time. In the emotional apex of our conversation, with tears streaming down her face, she explained the very human cost of this segregation. When she watched TV news about suburban schools, she saw resources aplenty. But in Detroit, they had very little. “It’s frustrating to know that I could be learning all of these things and I could be doing all of these things, and I can’t,” Deanna told me. “And people think . . . that the children in the Detroit Public Schools are stupid and brutish because of what they see on television. And it’s not true. We want to learn. We want to be able to do what the other children are doing. We want to have the same opportunities. But they keep taking them away from us. They keep—it’s like they’re keeping us down! . . . And every day I want to know why. Why is this happening?”
We titled the film A National Disgrace, not only because of the deep dysfunction of the Detroit schools, but because we as a nation allowed this to happen. And studies have shown that some of the most segregated school districts are in the most liberal cities—like New York and San Francisco. What lessons are we teaching our children? We may support social programs that we think help those who are disadvantaged or who have faced discrimination, but if we do not fully engage in a spirit of inclusion on a personal level, we are failing. We live largely separated from one another, and most people seem to be okay with that. It is not good enough to vote for politicians who will do the right thing on racial issues, or even to give money to worthy causes. If we are not actively trying to tear down the “fences to separate the races,” as Justice Marshall described it, then we are all part of the problem.
Building a more inclusive nation for women presents a unique set of hurdles (keeping in mind that LGBTQ women and women from racial minorities face multiple forms of discrimination). We have made great strides. But I worry deeply that the biases against women have proven difficult to identify and correct within individuals. And this condition doesn’t apply only to men; I have known many women who have great talent and intelligence but who diminish themselves in accordance with the expectations of society at large.
The struggles women face in achieving equality remain both legal and cultural. In 2007, my reporting team and I investigated a story of female and minority custodians in the New York City public schools who claimed they had faced discrimination in the early 1990s. Of the nearly 900 custodians, 92 percent were white, and only 12 individuals were women. The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice brought suit in 1996. But when New York City agreed to a settlement, a group of white male custodians sued, claiming reverse discrimination. The American Civil Liberties Union became involved to look out for the rights of the female and minority custodians, but a final resolution wasn’t reached until 2014, when a federal judge gave final approval to another settlement that seemed to address the concerns of all the parties. This story is a reminder that often the plights of women and minorities are linked, and that justice is often delayed if not denied.
The division of the ACLU that had taken up the custodians’ case was the Women’s Rights Project, which was cofounded by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the early ’70s. Ginsburg directed the unit until she joined the federal bench in 1980, and during her time at the ACLU, in a series of landmark cases before the Supreme Court, she ushered in a new era of law for gender discrimination. It was something she had experienced firsthand: As one of only a handful of female law students at Harvard, she was denied a clerkship to the Supreme Court because of her gender, and after graduating tied for first in her class from Columbia Law School, she was not offered a single job by a law firm. Inspired by the civil rights movement, Ginsburg decided to join the ACLU and use the legal system to tackle the injustices facing women in American society. “Our strategy was the soul of simplicity,” Ginsburg has said. “It was to go after the stereotypes that were written into law.”
When Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993, 106 justices had preceded her, and only one, the trailblazer Sandra Day O’Connor, had been a woman. I met Justice Ginsburg recently in her chambers, and to be in her presence is to feel that she is a quintessential Supreme Court justice. She is thoughtful, wise, and clearly blessed with a brilliant mind that has been honed and shaped through years of scholarship. It is hard to remember that because of her gender, for most of American history almost no one would have thought of her as even a small-town lawyer, let alone a Supreme Court justice.
There is no doubt that having women on the bench has had a profound effect. In 2009, the court heard a case involving the strip search of a thirteen-year-old girl. At the time, Ginsburg was the only woman on the court, and during the oral arguments of the case, many of the justices expressed skepticism as to whether the girl’s rights had been violated. “They have never been a thirteen-year-old girl,” Justice Ginsburg explained to USA Today. “It’s a very sensitive age for a girl. I didn’t think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood.” It is believed that Justice Ginsburg set out to make sure her colleagues understood. In a result that surprised many court watchers, the justices ruled 8 – 1 in favor of the girl. This is the power of inclusion.
The more we are around people with a variety of life experiences, the more we can understand and value the needs and worth of our fellow citizens. But our own life experiences can also shape our views. In 2003, the conservative chief justice William Rehnquist issued a ruling upholding the Family and Medical Leave Act for state employers, a decision Justice Ginsburg called “such a delightful surprise” in an interview with the New York Times. Chief Justice Rehnquist had shown skepticism of such issues in the past, but Justice Ginsburg attributed his change of heart to the facts of his own life. “When his daughter Janet was divorced, I think the chief felt some kind of responsibility to be kind of a father figure to those girls [his grandchildren]. So he became more sensitive to things that he might not have noticed.”
In many ways, we have made important legal progress when it comes to women. As the proud father of a daughter who came of age in the wake of a growing feminist movement, I saw how she benefited, as did many students and athletes, from the famous Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972. That act stated: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” But it’s one thing to have greater equality of opportunity under the law (itself an elusive goal), and another to see it happen in practice. How do we modify a work environment to better acknowledge the biological realities of pregnancy, childbirth, and the need for day care? How do we counteract the shaming of women according to how they look or act when we see case after case of a reinforced gender hierarchy in our media, on Wall Street and Main Street, in Silicon Valley, and from some of our highest elected officials? How do we ward off the subtle undertow of the prevalent belief that women are not good in science and math, which can lead to what social scientists call the “stereotype threat”? These are not easy questions, and they defy easy solutions. But as society has gotten more inclusive, we can no longer ignore them. And that, in itself, is a form of progress.
When I was young, we heard often of how the United States was a great melting pot. It is a fine metaphor as far as it goes. But inclusion, not assimilation, should be the key concept in seeking, ever seeking, a more perfect national union. Our own history has shown that we are stronger as a mosaic than a melting pot. Our nation is bound together more by ideals than by blood or land, and inclusion is in our cultural DNA. We should feel proud that we are not all the same, and that we can share our differences under the common umbrella of humanity. To do so, we must confront the voices of intolerance and come to terms with our own complicity in condoning the divisions in our society. We have seen that progress is possible, within ourselves and the nation at large. But it requires perseverance, hard work, and a commitment to respect the dignity of all who call America home.