Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Paula Dean and the Civil Rights Movement

There is not one person alive in this country, or maybe the entire world, who hasn't used a racist or ethnic or religious slur sometime in their lifetime.  I know that I have, and sometimes still do if provoked enough. It works both ways.

There is probably no one reading this post that was more involved in the Civil Rights Movement than me.  I have marched, protested, written about and shouted for civil rights my entire life.  Been in fist fights, spat at and called "nigger lover" a dozen times, but I support the Supreme Court's decision.  I felt the exception article of the Civil Rights Amendment was unconstitutional when passed in the 60's and I still do.  You cannot single out one part of the country for special treatment over another no matter how "justified."

Frankly, one of the biggest disappointments of my lifetime is how the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement have been squandered.  My black friends are as disappointed as I am at the state of their society.  Fact:  70% of black children live in single-parent households.  This has nothing to do with slavery or oppression or the government, but everything to do with morality.  Nationwide, African Americans are #1 in every single failure indicator, be it crime, poverty, welfare or education.  It's time for the whining, excuses, and outright bull shit to stop.

9 comments:

  1. Surely there’s more to it than that?

    I don’t know about the US but there is a similar problem as you describe here and there are similar opinions.
    I would say simplifications and generalisations rarely help.

    (Should I have kept my mouth shut?)

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    1. There surely is more to it than that... but what is it? And, why does the same behavior bridge oceans? I certainly don't have the answers but I do know that many people, particularly those who fought and died for civil rights, are bitterly disappointed.

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  2. I refuse to brand the dysfunction in an impoverished Black community racism. 50 years ago I may have, especially here where there was no entrepreneurial capital that banks would make available, but there were other ways that could have been overcome in a single generation. If education through to and including advanced degrees was prized and valued as much as getting high, if The programs of The Great Society had been term limited instead of becoming multigenerational ways of life, if guns had not been produced in mass quantities and pushed as the ultimate symbol of machismo masculinity, if the assholes of the religious right had allowed science to be taught in sex education classes rather than their perverted version of morality, if all races would stop pre-naming themselves with some subculture label instead of what we are Americans, if the true lasting ignorance of having to have someone to look down on to validate your worth died quickly rather than this slow lingering centuries long death, maybe just maybe there would be no racial, cultural, class warfare among us.

    Until then we are as we are a directionless herd turned and driven to self immolation by the loudest voice in the room.

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  3. i agree with marks last statement...

    i had an experience a couple years ago that always gives me a bit of perspective...i was building houses in harlan kentucky...an old mining town impoverished after the mine left...and i cant remember the poverty rate but its really high...and as we were talking i asked why they just did not leave and go somewhere they could get a job that paid better...but it was all they ever knew...it was what they were raised in...it was what they learned...i do believe environment plays a factor...i believe that the community you live in and its attitudes (including parents) play a factor...

    i differ in that i think this does go back to slavery and even further into our history defining most all of us...those who have rule, those who dont work for them...and find their ways to escape that reality the best they can with stupid decisions...people typically stay in their crab pots except those allowed to break free when they have something to offer of worth

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    1. Of course there are no simple answers, but two things come immediately to mind. First, I'll bet that even though very poor, those families in Kentucky were still a family. 70% of the men didn't just bail on their parental responsibilities. Second, I grew up in a pretty poor family, the black folks up the road from us were as well off as we, and all of us, them and we, turned out as productive citizens with moral values of responsibility to self and family. Those values are nearly totally lacking in the black sub-culture and I don't know why.

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  4. "You cannot single out one part of the country for special treatment over another no matter how 'justified.'" I agree. I think the exception clause to the Voting Rights Act should apply to all fifty states. Progress has been made since the 1960s, but not enough. And that's true in the north as well as the south. Northerners are just more coy and more discreet about their racism than southerners are; they're not any less racist.

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  5. I think the hidden racist is more damaging that the one that is in your face..like the supreme court.

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