If we don’t consider the American civil rights struggle of the mid-20th century over by now, then we will never consider it over.Posted on 08/28/2013 12:55:44 PM PDT by smoothsailing
August 28, 2013
If we don’t consider the American civil rights struggle of the mid-20th century over by now, then we will never consider it over.
It takes a special, perverse kind of pessimist to think that civil rights marchers in the early 1960s would cast a cynical eye on the progress that’s been made and respond, as the progressive site Beggars Can Be Choosers recently did, with an article titled “Why Today’s ‘Stealth’ Bigots Are Worse Than Old-School Racists,” or to compare the Trayvon Martin shooting to that of Emmett Till.
While civil rights protestors converge on the National Mall this week to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech, ask yourself which of the following activities a single African-American anywhere in this country has been prohibited from carrying out over the past 25 years: serving alongside whites in the military; attending public schools with non-black children; sitting in the white section on public transportation; attending state universities; demonstrating for civil rights; voting without a poll tax or a literacy test; or marrying interracially.
That’s right, none—though they are still occasionally chastised for rushing the stage and interrupting an award winner’s speech at the Video Music Awards. Progress is slow where it comes.
If the civil rights movement is a struggle with anything resembling a final resolution, we have to be able to pick a point at which we say, “OK, we’ve achieved the movement’s main goals—let’s move on to something else.”
If we’re not willing to anticipate an actual, concrete end—if we insist that the struggle go on forever—then we’re not really interested in a solution.
We’ve long since reached the point where not only has every legal prohibition against African-Americans been removed from the law, we regularly pass laws that give material advantages to African-Americans at the expense of other groups. How can anyone seriously claim that civil rights protections are not being respected, when most are demonstrably being enforced in a way that’s overly favorable to African-Americans?
Perhaps we should view racial progress not in terms of liberties but rather accomplishments that reflect more enlightened attitudes. How have African-Americans fared on, say, attaining positions of power?
In the past century, blacks have served as governors of New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Louisiana. Blacks have been elected mayor of many large cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Houston, New Orleans, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Denver, and St. Louis. We’ve had blacks heading cities and towns large, medium, and small, in every region, in every type of community, in cities with every manner of racial makeup.
How about positions at the highest levels of government? Under just the past three Presidents, we’ve had African-Americans appointed to be Attorney General; Secretary of State; National Security Adviser; Ambassador to the United Nations; U.S. Trade Representative; Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Affairs, Labor, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs; Director of the Office of Management and Budget; Drug Czar; and Head of the Environmental Protection Agency. What’s left—President of the United States?
Oh, right.
If African-Americans have been granted all the above rights and filled all the above positions and still don’t have equality under the law, then equality under the law no longer has any meaning.
Handsome poster there, smoothsailing.
Even the Black folk have tuned out Obama and his Black racist ilk!!!
The turnout today was not good at all. Imagine three Democrat Presidents, and nobody came to speak of!!!
As I’ve said before there isn’t any black person under the age of sixty in America who has ever experienced racism as it was fifty years ago. And as long as racism is a profitable industry for the ‘’victims’’ and the race hustlers, it will continue.
This observation insightfully identifies the underlying dynamic of all "progressive" agendas. There is no "stop" mechanism in progressive ideology. There is no point at which the progressive is willing to say "enough." The inevitable result is a descent into totalitarianism.
Which of those is the better for it?
“The Civil Rights Movement is so over”
A great many black people are not interested in equality today because in their minds, it is simply not enough for them.
When we learned that, according to the liberals, black people are too stupid to acquire identification with their picture on it, then we knew Civil Rights initiatives have failed.
It isn’t Civil Rights anymore. It is Racial Spoils.
BTTT to your photo.
Spiegel left out that Blacks are allowed to stand in front of polling places with billy clubs and intimidate voters.
EBT card refills on Wednesday?
Call it the “Uncivil Entitlements Movement.”
Truth in advertising.
So true. Any failing is self-inflicted.
The author forgot to throw in affirmative action. The playing field has gotten a reverse tilt since the days of MLK.
Wrong. The Civil Rights Movement has become institutionalized.
Check out the T-shirts they’re selling on the Washington Mall today...
The new civil rights movement is about allowing feral black gangs to roam urban landscapes preying on white victims who have never done anything to stand between blacks and their rights or success. Civil rights today are about continuing to hear blacks whine loudly, spreading hate, violence and contempt for everyone else, regardless of how much they have tried to accommodate and respond to the irrational demands of the black mob.
Oh Wow, that’s way over the top.
The turkeys that pull this kind of stuff now have no idea what the Civil Rights movement or Dr. King was about.
A shame that those that do don’t put a stop to this kind of thing.
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