From the LA TIMES
"All but the most unrepentant racist knows that slavery was evil and that the years of Jim Crow and segregation in the South were little better. But, not everyone recognizes how, though those wicked days are past, their negative effects linger and fester. The economic toll on black people during the long decades of oppression was staggering. Many immigrants -- Irish, Italians, Chinese and others -- came to this country and suffered discrimination, too. Eventually, though, doors opened for all of them and bias withered away. They, or their descendants, were able to take part in the economic life of this society and build wealth over time. For black Americans, that opportunity came very late, if it came at all. (Only Native Americans were as cut off from America's ever-expanding riches.)
The cost of this exploitation is almost incalculable in monetary terms. The extreme damage done to community life, however, is all too obvious...
Year after year, America spends millions of dollars on cops and prisons to contain the worst manifestations of this legacy of discrimination, but never do we take on the burdens of the black community as a burden we all share.
Of course, black Americans must do their part -- and a great many are trying with all their might to break out of the cycle of violence, despair and economic insecurity in which they find themselves. But white Americans need to break out of the lazy smugness that allows them to ignore their own responsibility to their fellow citizens.
~LA TIMES, 2014
POST FERGUSON
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http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-history-hinders-black-americans-20140908-story.html
Like Chris Rock said, racial progress is the really the progress of white people and their attitude toward race. After all, we already know we're as human as they are. When Martin Luther King said,
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.what he meant was
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where the dominant white culture will not continue to insist on judging them by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.In the 1960s when he said it, white people understood the subtext.
So, one could say, that at least 63% of white men and 53% of white women (the percentages that voted for Trump) have gone skidding backward hella fast at close to1000 mph in the last couple of decades because the white right tends to trot this quote out and misuse it to justify racism, making it obvious they don't know what their grandparents did 50 years back.
Yes, there's been a lot of progress since 1960. Black people can ride in the front of the bus, eat in whatever restaurant they want, and go to the college of their choice if their parents were fortunate enough to jump through the window of opportunity that opened for blacks for a few years right after The Civil Rights Movement. But I can't say there was a hell of a lot of progess between 1980 and 2008.
When the first black president was elected, that was progress in and of itself. And as fast as the Racist In Chief tries to undo everything President Obama did he still hasn't undone things like the Fair Sentencing Act which still isn't "fair" but a lot better. White folks using powder cocaine used to have to have 100x more of the illicit drug on them than black folks carrying crack cocaine to run up against the minimum federal sentencing standards.
And no matter what Agent Evil Orange does, the American public has seen an attempt to provide healthcare for everyone. Without the Public Option Obamacare didn't function as it should have, thanks to a republican in democrat's clothing Joe Lieberman. But it's no longer just a theory that we can do better for poor people who need healthcare. Chucklehead can't take that knowledge away. When he leaves office or dies, somebody will take up that fight again.
But there's no denying that we're on a quick backward slide with Birther King in office. And as I suspected would happen, without a charismatic leader Black Lives Matter has been very silent since Obama left office.
White run news networks no longer see black skin on the screen as profitable since Obama left office. And in the run up to the election, when people thought Hillary would be our next president black news anchors started decreasing in number on various networks and Melissa Harris Perry lost her show at a critical political moment.
But Black Lives Matter has not disappeared altogether.
Even before we found out 6 out of the 8 bullets that hit Stephon Clark hit him in the back, we were marching in large enough numbers to make the national news. Unlike black people in other white dominated countries like France, England, and Italy, we are still strong enough to make ourselves heard around the world. This alone should be seen as progress we've made since 2008.
But now Mean Tangerine is in office it is time to ask the same Dr. King asked in the last years of his life.
"What Next?"
BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM
P.S. Personally, I think what comes next is a black and brown led political party. I'd like to think we could take over the democratic party. But for so long as there is a strong white contingent that's as bent as Bernie Sanders on trying to cover up the fact that Trump voters voted for Trump BECAUSE OF and not IN SPITE OF his racist attitudes, that may be too big a fight for us to win in a timely fashion.
I think we have to create a new black and brown led political party where the Bernie Sanders type people get shut down immediately when they start trying to throw kitty litter to cover up what they halfway know is b.s.
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