Green Book and wedding cakes

Poster (Source: imdb.com)

While the rest of America was watching the Super Bowl, my wife and I played rebels and went to a movie instead. We saw “Green Book,” directed by Peter Farrelly, which tells the based-on-a-true-story of a 1962 concert tour of the southern U.S. by black pianist Don Shirley. Mahershala Ali stars as Dr. Shirley, Viggo Mortensen plays the parochial white New Yorker who serves as Shirley’s muscleman-driver, and Linda Cardellini plays Mortensen’s wife.

Example of green book, from New York Public Library
via history.com

The Green Book referenced in the title, which as book qua book actually doesn’t factor that centrally to the plot, was a publication intended to guide black travelers around segregated America, listing places where they could shop, eat, lodge, and so forth. Many of those places depicted in the film were rather low on the amenities scale, but blacks who looked for better accommodations were putting their lives on the line. In the course of the movie Dr. Shirley was physically assaulted twice when he found himself in whites-only facilities; other occasions were merely awkward.

Listed in the Green Book, low on the amenities scale (Source: imdb.org)

Segregation in 1950s-60s America was by no means confined to the South. The State of Iowa, which comprises about 54,000 square miles, as of 1953 included exactly twelve places where African-Americans of that day could lodge; that year entrepreneur Cecil Reed found no place his family could stay between Cedar Rapids and Denver ("Sepia Motel" 2018, Fannon 2013). The scarcity and sketchiness of public accommodations open to blacks surely informed the public accommodations provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which bars discrimination on the basis of race. As with segregated schools, segregated accommodations were separate but not close to equal.

Page showing Cedar Rapids's lone entry in the 1940 Green Book

Fast forward to this decade, where a number of businesses small and large are claiming exemptions from civil rights laws protecting gays and lesbians, based on the Constitution’s guarantee of free religious exercise. In a widely-known case, the Supreme Court last June upheld a Colorado bakery owner’s religious freedom claim against the State of Colorado after the baker refused to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding. Four years earlier, the Court found the Hobby Lobby Corporation entitled to claim religious exemption from providing their employees insurance plan(s) under the Affordable Care Act that included contraception coverage.

I’ve been making the case on this blog that inclusion of all, on an equal basis, is a fundamental aspect of community; in our common life, there can be no second-class citizens. You can’t exclude people based on their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, &c., &c. If you believe religiously, as people did not too long ago, that blacks are not entitled to the same access to opportunities as whites, that religious belief is twisted but protected, but can’t be applied in the public square. Exclusion from the benefits of society is fundamentally wrong.

But, pragmatically, gays getting married, or women seeking contraception, are not today in the position of blacks circa 1962. There surely are multiple bakeries in Lakewood, Colorado (pop. 147,000) that would do a cake for a gay couple; insurance companies at the time of the Hobby Lobby case seemed eager to find a work-around to keep the corporation’s hands clean. Without denying that we’re not close to full equality of all people, both gay marriage and contraception are part of the mainstream national culture today. No Green Book is necessary for anyone to find the services they need.

Outside Hawkins' Mens' Store, where things aren't going to go well (Source: imdb.org)

There still is, of course, the problem of humiliation when one finds that “we don’t serve your kind.” Ali’s character in “Green Book,” Dr. Shirley, repeatedly encounters situations where establishments that don’t display a “Whites Only” sign nonetheless serve only whites, or serve blacks but don’t allow them to use dressing rooms, eat in the actual restaurant, and so forth. It seems at the very least establishments that claim religious based exemptions from serving certain types of people make that publicly known. Then everyone would know in advance who could get served, and could make their purchasing and job application decisions accordingly. (Note: There is a bar in Cedar Rapids I won't patronize because until recently they displayed a prominent sign banning do-rags. I don't wear do-rags, but I also choose not to be associated with what smells like racism.)

I'm coming from a position of privilege on every dimension, so I'm trying to speak cautiously here. (Unfortunately, Blogger does not offer a "Cautious" font.) I think exclusion is exclusion, and it's wrong. Paint it with religion, and it's still exclusion, and it's still wrong. The conditions faced by black Americans well into my lifetime were intolerably wrong, and the provisions of the Civil Rights Act were way overdue. Could it be that the contemporary situations I referenced are... tolerably wrong?