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	Victory for Equity: Senate Leader Calls US to the Mountain Top By Clint Talbott Daily Camera January 11, 2008 http://dailycamera.com/news/2008/jan/11/victory-for-equity/ M ost of us spend little or no time watching the proceedings at the state Capitol. That is, of course, as it should be. We elect people to represent our interests and then hope for the best. Casual observers of state politics see partisan bickering and petty egotism. But the Colorado Legislature also has its share of good deeds and fine people. Peter Groff is one of the good ones, so it is particularly gratifying to watch his ascent. On Wednesday, he because the first African American to serve as president of the Colorado Senate. Groff acknowledged that his success was dependent on the sacrifice and suffering of many who came before him. His father, Regis Groff, for instance, held the Senate seat in which Peter Groff now serves. Like the father, the son conducts the business of legislating with respect and on principle. As he accepted the gavel and the power it signifies, Groff was both humble and eloquent. "I understand today that it is not just my hand that takes the gavel today," the Associated Press quoted him as saying. "I understand it is the hands of my relatives who toiled under the overseer's whip on the red clay of Georgia that take this gavel today on the red carpet of the Colorado Senate." Groff invoked Colorado images as he urged his colleagues to "climb above the forest of partisan politics and to ascend above the timberline to the summit, where we can see the long view and the pathway to a greater Colorado," the Rocky Mountain News quoted him as saying. Groff, 44, succeeds Joan Fitz-Gerald, who stepped down to run for Mark Udall's seat in Congress. As it happens, Fitz-Gerald was the first woman to serve as Senate President. Let us hope that critics are kinder to Groff than they were to Fitz-Gerald. Some Denver pundits showed a deep and visceral loathing of her. That animosity may have had its roots in the fact that she took courageous stands for victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, thereby offending the most zealous and unreasonable factions of the Catholic Church. Additionally, the enmity she faced may have been rooted in sexism -- an ancient prejudice that people tend to view as practically gone. It isn't. Similarly, the racism that shackled African Americans may have ebbed, but it has not perished from the Earth. It's been less than 90 years since the Ku Klux Klan dominated the state Legislature and the governor's office (and since University of Colorado President George Norlin bravely defied the Klan's call to fire all of CU's Catholics and Jews). Today, racial bigotry is mostly subterranean. But it nonetheless persists. This was, coincidentally, brought into stark relief this week by a call to the Camera from a local man reacting to a Boulder survey, which reported that whites feel more comfortable here than do ethnic minorities. The caller said the results made sense. After all, he said, white people would be less comfortable living near higher numbers of African Americans and Hispanics. He said it was reasonable to avoid those racial groups because, he said, they were "intellectually incurious," lacking in good family values, and disproportionately likely to commit criminal offenses. Reeling from the utter astonishment of hearing someone present such ideas as if they were reasonable, the Camera employee responded by saying that such statements illustrated raw racial prejudice and mindless stereotyping and that the caller should re-examine his beliefs. In such people, that sort of introspection is unlikely. That is one of legions of reasons it is heart-rending and uplifting to see Peter Groff assume the leadership of the Senate. He is a living, breathing refutation of our vile, virulent and vacuous history of prejudice.
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