General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIt was just under 50 yrs ago that the Civil Rights Act passed. It was so close behind us.
Last edited Sun Mar 11, 2012, 09:36 AM - Edit history (1)
It should be remembered that there are still folks around who actually experienced institutionalized racism and discrimination full-force, first-hand in their lifetimes. Critics of the opinions of the U.S. of black activists like Barack Obama's acquaintance at Harvard, Professor Derrick Bell, are certainly free to point out their mistrust and distaste of the white-dominated infrastructure of government and businesses they were made to endure.
Yet, to characterize that mistrust and cynicism of black Americans like Bell (and other black activists and advocates) toward the actions and attitudes of the nation's white majority as something sinister or untoward is completely dismissive of America's antagonistic past regarding almost every aspect of blacks' existence in the country.
You have to ask yourself just how black folks who grew up in that confrontational and discriminatory era, as well as the generations who followed, were supposed to regard the cliquish white majority as they perused their quest for inclusion and advancement against such determined and insidious headwinds?
As we consider the relatively short distance we've managed to put between this generation today and that tragic past, we also need to ask ourselves if any of that progress would have been possible without that cynical, insistent attitude from Prof. Bell and others as they challenged the status quo?
When we celebrate the efforts of black leaders from the past who were confronting the bewildering, illogical facets of racism and Jim Crow, we need to view their actions and statements in opposition to it all in context of the amazingly vicious assault on the citizenship and establishment of people of color that they were facing down.
SoCalDem
(103,856 posts)a person alive (in the here & now) could have met someone who was born a slave..
a child born as slavery ended, and who lived into their 80's 90's would have been alive into the 1940's /50's/60's.. a person now alive, who was born in the 30's/40's could have been in their family or met that elderly person
The whole sorry mess is not that far-removed from us.
bigtree
(86,013 posts)It appears a bit schizophrenic, in the way that America's conscience seems to have turned on a dime, as we look back through our advantaged perspectives today. I'm not surprised to find many folks still unsettled, cynical, and still feeling a bit adversarial toward America as a whole; even today.
The Genealogist
(4,723 posts)She was my stepmother's maternal grandmother. She died at the end of 2009 or beginning of 2010. Her father had been a civil war vet, and was in his 60s when she was born in 1908. She lived to be 101.
MineralMan
(146,343 posts)The United States elected a black man as President. I remember the passage of the civil rights act. I was in high school, and I remember thinking, "Why did that take so long?"
Progress happens. It takes longer than it should, but it happens. Think back just 10 years, if you will. Did you think people of the same sex would be legally married in less than 10 years? I didn't. And yet, same sex marriage is legal, now, in 8 jurisdictions, and more are coming.
Progress happens. It takes longer than it should, but it happens. Where will be be in 10 more years? That depends on us.
bigtree
(86,013 posts). . . yet, that's not some all-encompassing progression of rights and opportunity. Many were left behind, and many more weren't able to advantage themselves of opportunity because of the setbacks and obstacles in their beginnings.
It's still going to be a tenuous regard of the nation and government by many African Americans because so many of the concessions, accommodations, and adjustments concerning blacks in America have been so grudging and contested; even today.