The Civil Rights Movement continues. We just don't do that much walking anymore. We learned a lot about the nature of racial politics. Had to. As Adept2U once put it, black folk been hearing dog whistles so loud, we are rolling on the grass with our ears bleeding.
In my opinion, it is not that most so called Progressives don't believe racism exists. They just seem to think it will look like it did before. You know, when Governors have press conferences to declare that no niggrahs and northern agitators were going to change a damn thing in their state. They knew our place and became the keepers of the gates. To keep us there. In our place. A place where it is an uphill climb to the bottom.
Oh and you can just pick a southern governor who put such rhetoric into the people's heads. You still can.
This current crop has a close and to me visible connection. They just use different words. They say the same thing. Sarah Palin anyone? Baley Harbour? Lester Maddox, and folk like Bull Connor were the face of racism back in the day. I could go on. George Wallace. Remember him?
The image of his twisted lips and his vile and vitriolic rhetoric remains. As do the pictures of a man in a wheel chair, victim of a violence he was willing to tolerate as long as those victims were black or the whites who supported their efforts.
George Wallace claimed to have had a conversion in the latter years of his life. Perhaps. We can never see into another person's heart so we are allowed to take his word for it. Or not.
My problem with him lies in the passion he exhibited in his effort to maintain Jim Crow. Can it be true as both he and Strom (I've got a middle aged black daughter that nobody acknowledges) Thurmon never really believed those things they advocated were right? According to them, they(racial politics) were expedient for political gain. To me this speaks of a core cynicism so profound it could only reside in the core of one's being. Worse than mere racism. Much worse.
At least the folks with the pointy hats and bright white sheets, believed, truly believed in their cause. They knew with a remarkable kind of prescience what would follow integration. We would start to marry, have children and erase the false lines that mark our boundaries as fellow human beings.
We may in fact be closer than any generation before us, but we are far from the goal of equality.
Even some who will admit institutionalize racism have difficulty accepting being the beneficiary of these institutions The reasoning seems to go along with the myth that keeps racist in a state of perpetual hope. The hope is simple enough. I hope my turn to be a rich white man in America will come. The way I understand the process, my chances are increased if we can hold others down. Or...I'm poor and being white has given me no privileges.
Some will admit that being stopped by cops because of skin color does happen, and they don't as a matter of policy get followed around stores. They apparently see it as a right and not a privilege. That this is not an option for everyone does not strike them as either racist or odd.
'Tis part of human frailty to cling to the idea that the American Dream was just that for most. The shiny object to distract from the truth. The game has always been rigged. It's in the Constitution.
See, they really could have stopped with the life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness business. I would have included the phrase that government exists for the sole purpose of making sure you didn't fuck with anyone else in their pursuit of life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's just me. The Founding Fathers had other ideas.
The Founding Fathers were men of advantage and privilege who started out with the idea the masses could not be trusted with the reins of democracy.
However much I understand their rationale, the attitude that only white men of privilege would make the decision for the whole is the seed that grew the roots that flowered into racism.
Slavery was a two-fer for some of our Founding Fathers. It was an economic move that helped a struggling new country to start putting money into coffers they would control. It kept slave owners happy so that they would indeed share the wealth.
These cretin racist can only continue with the consent of those who will not see them, cannot hear them and thus have no motivation to challenge them
Not in my constitution.
Now run and tell that.
News and Stories by Amazinggrace News Editor SistahSpeak
Her gifts made room for us: The visionary pragmatism of Dr. Dorothy Height
African Americans
In the days to come, many moving and well-deserved tributes will be written to Dr. Dorothy Height, Civil Rights pioneer and women’s rights advocate. There are many people who can do Dr. Height’s life more justice than I can, and I hope they will. But as a scholar who works on Black women’s intellectual history, I want to share a few ways Dr. Height’s life and accomplishments inspired me when I encountered her autobiography Open Wide the Freedom Gates as a graduate student.
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Confederate History is Supremacy History
Last week, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell proclaimed April Confederate History Month in his state. In fact he proclaimed the date on April 7, which is the same day in 1865 that Confederate general Robert E. Lee began to negotiate the terms of surrender with United States General Ulysses S. Grant. In some states, this day is considered Confederate Memorial Day, and Virginia is not alone in celebrating "Confederate History Month". Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana have celebrated this month for quite some time. In the last decade or so Texas (since 1999), Florida (since 2007), and Georgia (since 2009) have also instituted celebrations of Confederate History Month. Virginia celebrated from 1994-2002 before the commemoration was revoked.
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Challenging brutal oppression in the South, the student organization gave women a rare opportunity to lead.
When you listen to the women of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) recount their experiences as organizers in the Deep South a half-century ago, a crystal clear truth emerges: the civil rights movement could never have succeeded without the extraordinary creativity and courage of female organizers. As Charles M. Payne, a scholar at the University of Chicago, puts it, SNCC, "created a space in which women could emerge into leadership roles in ways that were very unusual in American history."
Complete story here
African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom, 1989 – 2010
The statement below was written in the summer of 1989 by Marcia Gillespie, who was then editor of Ms. Magazine. One of the signers, Loretta Ross, explains its history:
"This statement ... originated with a conference call organized by Donna Brazile, then executive director of the National Political Congress of Black Women, because we were strategizing on how to respond to the Webster Supreme Court decision [the 1989 ruling that allowed individual states to restrict access to abortion]. On that conference call, we decided that what was most urgently needed was a statement giving African American women permission to talk about abortion (the original suggestion was made by Byllye Avery). We then published the statement, distributed about 1/4 million copies of it, and the rest is history."
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Racism in Progressive Movements
A very important forum entitled Racism in Progressive Movements was held at a community center in Mid-Manhattan in New York City. It was sponsored by Third World Within, which is constituted of organizations run "by and for" communities of color.
The forum was attended predominantly by persons of Asian, Asian/Pacific Island, African, and Latino descent, and most were young, mainly of high school and college age. There were also older activists present, but this was the young blood that the progressive movement needs so much to have on board.
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The Grim Truth About Africa
We don’t talk about the genocide in places like the Congo, writes Stanley Crouch, because we can’t face up to who’s really responsible for the rape and slaughter.
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