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"[SIZE=3]And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I'm just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period, to see what is unfolding. And I'm happy that he's allowed me to be in Memphis."[/SIZE]
"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
"[SIZE=3]You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails so express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative. "[/SIZE]
"[SIZE=3]My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral that individuals."[/SIZE]
"[SIZE=3]I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another mans freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro the wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating that absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
"[/SIZE]The first thing I would like to mention is that there must be a recognition on the part of everybody in this nation that America is still a racist country. Now however unpleasant that sounds, it is the truth. And we will never solve the problem of racism until there is a recognition of the fact that racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation and we must see racism for what it is."
"Now there is another myth that still gets around: it is a kind of over reliance on the bootstrap philosophy. There are those who still feel that if the Negro is to rise out of poverty, if the Negro is to rise out of the slum conditions, if he is to rise out of discrimination and segregation, he must do it all by himself. And so they say the Negro must lift himself by his own bootstraps. They never stop to realize that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil. The people who say this never stop to realize that the nation made the black man’s color a stigma. But beyond this they never stop to realize the debt that they owe a people who were kept in slavery two hundred and forty-four years.
In 1863 the Negro was told that he was free as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation being signed by Abraham Lincoln. But he was not given any land to make that freedom meaningful. It was something like keeping a person in prison for a number of years and suddenly discovering that that person is not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted. And you just go up to him and say, "Now you are free," but you don’t give him any bus fare to get to town. You don’t give him any money to get some clothes to put on his back or to get on his feet again in life.
Every court of jurisprudence would rise up against this, and yet this is the very thing that our nation did to the black man. It simply said, "You’re free," and it left him there penniless, illiterate, not knowing what to do. And the irony of it all is that at the same time the nation failed to do anything for the black man, though an act of Congress was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest. Which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor.
But not only did it give the land, it built land-grant colleges to teach them how to farm. Not only that, it provided county agents to further their expertise in farming; not only that, as the years unfolded it provided low interest rates so that they could mechanize their farms. And to this day thousands of these very persons are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies every years not to farm. And these are so often the very people who tell Negroes that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps. It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.
We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice."
Understand that the individuals on both sides of those issues are still alive, still hold the same values (good and bad), are still clenched in combat...and that generation still controls US industry, media, and government.
That fight can't end until the Boomer Generation--the last generation in which racial segregation was inculcated as the social norm--is dead.
There still aren't that many integrated neighborhoods in 2016. Segregation may not be the law of the land, but it is the fact on the ground in which Gen X & millennials are rooted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by whocares811
I hope you are not implying that ALL -- or even the majority -- of Baby Boomers (and older) are still racist. Based on what I and my 60-something acquaintances believe, that is VERY far from the truth.
Also, who do you think were pushing for equal rights back in the 60's? Although it is true that a great many of the protestors were black, there were many whites that were pushing for equality between races, too.
Yes, there were white allies in the 60s, as there are now. But there are opponents, too--just as there were back then.
Quote:
Originally Posted by whocares811
I think I understand the point you are making and I do agree with your post in large part, except for the second sentence.
Although I don't think any individual has tried to steal or take anyone's "spot", I strongly believe that some groups of people (institutions, committees, etc.) are now making things unfair to whites in an attempt to atone for the injustice shown to minorities in the past. To give just example as to why I think this, have you seen this?
There still aren't that many integrated neighborhoods in 2016. Segregation may not be the law of the land, but it is the fact on the ground in which Gen X & millennials are rooted..
Younger people today really don't have a fathoming grasp of how different their lives are with respect to race than the lives of Boomers and earlier generations.
As I've mentioned before in other threads, I was in the 7th grade before I even knew a single white person by name. I'd never even spoken to a white child. I'd never sat in a movie theater or a classroom with a white person before then, certainly never swam in the same pool with one. With extremely rare exception, I'd never even seen black and white children interact with one another on television or in the movies, not even in a commercial. Any black children living in the same neighborhoods as the Cleavers, the Nelsons, or even the Stevens'? Nope. Not even in the same neighborhoods as the Flintstones or the Jetsons.
That was even more true for white children, who never had a reason to enter the black part town (my parents had to take me into town every now and then when I at least saw white kids at Woolworth).
When I was in the first grade, our house was right on the border, right on the dividing street, between the white residential area and the black residential area. Since Brown v Topeka had been decided, my mother took me to Franklin D Roosevelt Elementary School, which was two blocks away from out house...but across that street.
I still remember the principal telling my mother, "Oh, no, he can't attend here. He must attend Carver Elementary"--which was a mile and a half way, deeper into the black part of town.
I hope you are not implying that ALL -- or even the majority -- of Baby Boomers (and older) are still racist. Based on what I and my 60-something acquaintances believe, that is VERY far from the truth.
Also, who do you think were pushing for equal rights back in the 60's? Although it is true that a great many of the protestors were black, there were many whites that were pushing for equality between races, too.
I agree that the majority of baby boomers and older are not racists, but I am guessing that there is a greater percentage of racists within that age group than any other.
Unfair to whites? 75% of doctors are white. About 60% of Harvard undergrads are white. 91% of Fortune 500 CEOs are white.
Perhaps I should have bolded "now" in my post re: preferential treatment NOW being given to blacks and Hispanics, at least in medical school admittance. I am certainly not disputing the fact that whites were definitely given preferential treatment until recently -- and I think I have made that clear in my posts.
In any case, about 60% of the population is, in fact, non-Hispanic white*, and that percentage was much higher 30 years ago when many of the Fortune 500 CEOs and current MDs were still in school, the fact that 60% of Harvard undergrads and 91% of Fortune 500 CEO's are white is not all that surprising -- and especially when you factor in the fact that preference WAS often given to whites in almost every area.
Again, I am certainly not disputing the fact that things were VERY different 30+ years ago than they are today, and back then, I definitely agree that whites definitely had the advantage in almost every way. I also, btw, certainly do not dispute the fact that there is still a lot of bigotry and racism going on.
I agree that the majority of baby boomers and older are not racists, but I am guessing that there is a greater percentage of racists within that age group than any other.
I would say that all of us--every single one of us Boomers--carries the effects of our early inculcation of segregation. A great many of us shrug it off--like an alcoholic who gave up the booze years ago. Even black Boomers still feel a little like we're stepping through a forbidden door when we are in a place or position that was "not for Negros" when we were kids. And we are aware that there are whites our age around us who feel it too.
The election of Obama caused a many who hadn't been drinking the segregationist booze to go back to that bottle.
Younger people today really don't have a fathoming grasp of how different their lives are with respect to race than the lives of Boomers and earlier generations.
Hopefully the generations of 50 years from now will have an even greater chasm to be unaware of.
I spent a part of those "wonder years" growing up in the Jim Crow south. It was appalling. I have lived to see my own kids invited on ski trips by the families of black friends from school. I hope my grandkids will find themselves even further along in their own times.
Their leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the folks at BLM are sure.
The idea that you believe that all blacks would take the words of Jackson and Sharpton as gospel proves that poster's point.
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