We do live in an age of hyperbolic statements don't we? In his first reaction to the 'Duck Dynasty' controversy the Reverend Jesse Jackson speaks up.
"At least the bus driver, who ordered Rosa Parks to surrender her seat to a white person, was following state law,” Jackson said in a press release Tuesday, as quoted by the Chicago Tribune. “Robertson's statements were uttered freely and openly without cover of the law, within a context of what he seemed to believe was ‘white privilege.’”
Some have said linking this to Rosa Parks is taking this "too far" - but I think, and I will show over the flip, that this is
precisely on point.
For one thing, Jackson isn't the first person to compare the Roberstson situation to Parks. Illinois Republican Congressional candidate Ian Bayne said that Robertson was the "Rosa Parks of our Generation", arguing that his anti-gay rant was somehow a defiant and bold move against some kind of discrimination or the other limiting the ability of people to hatefully mis-interpret scripture to justify their screed at the risk of A&E Jail.
Or something.
Another irony of this is that what Jackson says here isn't really all that different from what people such as Ron & Rand Paul have said about the Civil Rights Era.
Paul explained that while he supports the fact that the legislation repealed the notorious Jim Crow laws, which forced racial segregation, he believes it is the government, not the people, that causes racial tensions by passing overreaching laws that institutionalize slavery and segregation.
As Rev. Jackson states, it was
State Law that compelled that particular Bus Driver on that particular day to request that Rosa Parks surrender her seat to a White patron. Even if he personally opposed the policy, he was required by the government to do it.
Ron Paul likes to pretend that absent this "government coercion" there wouldn't have even needed to be a Civil Rights movement or a Civil Rights Act, but I think Phil Robertson's comment show us very clearly that he is wrong.
Let's break it all down shall we? This is what Rev Jackson is referring to from Phil's GQ interview.
"I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person," Robertson told the magazine. "Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white trash. We're going across the field. ... They're singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, 'I tell you what: These doggone white people' -- not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues."
Jackson's point is that nothing in the law required Robertson to say or believe any of this drivel, but apparently
he does.
[In disclosure: My family, my mother, all my aunts and uncles are from Shreveport, which is in the same section of Louisiana the Phil is from near Monroe, so through them I've had an open window into the world he speaks of]
Here's the thing about the Jim Crow South that many people don't really fully know or understand. People were not beaten or abuse daily in the streets ala the Edmon Petis bridge or the dogs and firehoses of Bull Connor. That was the very rare exception. It's very well possible that you could go through most of your life in that area and not directly see "any mistreatment of any black person" with your own eyes. But that doesn't mean it wasn't happening.
There were rules back then limiting and controlling exactly what Black people could do and where they could do it. You wouldn't normally see anyone "mistreated" as long as they stayed within the confines of those rules. For this reason, among others, black and white neighborhoods in Shreveport weren't necessarily segregated. They lived along side each other. Now one person might be living in a near-mansion and the other in a Shotgun Shack like the one my mother lived in when she was young, but they would be and could be next door neighbors.
But that doesn't mean they were friends. Or even acquaintances.
If a white person, or persons, were walking down the sidewalk and a black person approached from the other direction - the Unwritten Rules said that the black person had to cross to the other side of the street and MAKE WAY for the Whites to pass. Just like with Rosa Parks being required to surrender her seat and move to the back of the bus, this was a daily occurrence. Rosa's refusal to comply - which happened to have been the day after NAACP Leader Medger Evers was shot and killed one hundred days after the murder of Emmett Till resulted in her arrest and prompted a widespread boycott of the Bus system.
However, anyone who didn't bother to cross the street and make proper deference to a passing white person just might get themselves arrested for assault and/or beaten nearly to death, and unlike Parks, this would be unlikely to reach the news. That wasn't "State Law', it was just "how it was".
So again, as long as the darkies stayed in their place, well, of course, you wouldn't SEE them "mistreated". It was just out of sight, out of mind.
The Louisiana State Fair takes place in Shreveport, all during the years that my mother lived there it was segregated. Blacks were not allowed to attend until the very last day of the fair, at which points many of the rides and attractions were in the process of being dismantled and packed onto train cars. This was the practice during much of the 60's until the black people of Shreveport decided they'd had enough and Boycotted that final day of the Fair. The revenue loss by merchants who suddenly found the entire Fair grounds empty was significant enough to end the practice, and change the rule.
Phil says he never heard a black person bellyache about those "doggone white people".
If you were black, living in the world where you can't go to the same schools as white people, you can't drink from the same water fountains as white people, you can't go to the same bathrooms as white people, you can't stay in the same hotels, you can't eat at the same restaurants and lunch counters... where you are in a permanent state of virtual terrorism if you happen to do something "Out Of Line"... on what planet does he think someone in that situation is going to suddenly Confide In HIM what they really think and feel about White People?
I mean fucking Really?
All of this was going on at the same time, and in the same place, that Phil grew up in - yet he is this clueless about it?
Like a lot of things about Phil and his family, this simply is. not. credible.
Now, it's one thing to suggest that living in segregated Louisiana was a happy-go-lucky picnic for Black people - when anyone with common sense and even some basic history should know that ain't true, but then he goes further with this.
Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.
Pre-Entitlement? Is he talking about Medicare because that happens to be an "Entitlement" that was brought into being during the 60's. How about TANF and General Assistance? Is that what he means by Welfare? Or is he talking about the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, the former of which was opposed by people like Barry Goldwater, Ron Paul, Rand Paul and John Stossel on the grounds the it
limits the "freedom" of business owners to discriminate against people, and the latter which was recently called a "Racial Entitlement" by Justice Scalia just before the Supreme Court struck down it's most effective provision?
He seems to be suggesting that all of Black people problems over the last 50 years, are the fault of [progressive] government programs. That before Entitlements and Welfare all the Black people he ever saw, or apparently knew about, were Happy as Peach Pie and Godly. All of the Free Food via SNAP has apparently gotten them spoiled rotten, never mind the fact that most people receiving Entitlements and Welfare Are Not Black.
It's a bit unclear what Robertson is fully suggesting because GQ doesn't allow him to elaborate, but I for one would like to know - just what the Frack is He Talking About?
Is he suggesting as did Libertarian/Conservative author Dinesh D'souza 20 years ago in his book "The End of Racism" that what we should do to fix the "Black Problem" is simply repeal all Entitlements, repeal Welfare, and then repeal the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act too? He like Ron Paul, and Alan West blames the Government [meaning Democrats] for Black peoples plight.
If that's what Phil was trying to say, I would have to agree with Rev Jackson that it's more than a little worse than the driver who told Rosa Parks to move, then called the police when she refused. He is apparently completely blind to the true circumstances that Black people were in back then, and seems to think that going back to the circumstances of that time - would not only be just fine, it would be better for Black People.
Seriously, does he mean this?
Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.
Because That's Just Fracking Deluded.
And if he doesn't mean what D'souza has said, and what Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich said when he called Barack Obama the "Greatest Food Stamp President" [never mind that participation in SNAP first spiked as a result of the financial meltdown under George W. Bush], with George W. Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security, and Paul Ryan's attempt to privatize Medicare, and what Alan West has said...
REP. ALLEN WEST, R-FLA.: [Obama] does not want you to have the self- esteem of getting up and earning and having that title of American. He'd rather you be his slave and be economically dependent upon him.
what exactly did Phil mean - because this is
Fracking Deluded too? Obama wants to make people his "Slave" with Entitlements?
Really? Unfortunately this just happens to be a central tenant in the Tea Party Platform. Phil might not have meant exactly this, but if not - what else could he have meant because I've been reading and re-reading that quote for over a week, yet so far - only the kind of blind anti-Entitlement screeds of people like West and D'Souza fits.
Vyan