Terrific interview with Dick Gregory at Salon.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/30/you_think_the_fcking_tea_party_determines_public_policy_dick_gregory_on_racism_the_1_percent_and_why_black_americans_are_angry_at_the_wrong_people/

There’s people in this world making millions of dollars every year just as interest on their money. That’s what I mean by “white folks.” I perform 200 days out of the year, and every time I say if I took over America, the first thing I’d make the black folks do is apologize to the white folks–because you’re mad at the wrong white folks! The white folks you’re mad at couldn’t hit at you if they’d like to. You guys get mad at the white folks at the Sears & Roebucks, the Walgreens, but I want you to be mad at the Saks Fifth Avenue ones. But they’ve got power, and you’re scared of that.

Who are you mad at? The Ku Klux Klan? Lynch mobs? How many black folks died from lynching as opposed to the effects of public policy? You think Negro-hating rednecks who can’t read or write, you think they determine public policy? You think the fucking Tea Party determines public policy? Let me tell you, if they do shut down the government that’s because the damn Rockefellers in power want it to be shut down. If that one percent didn’t want you to do something they could have tanks in your neighborhood and wipe you out before they’d let you get away with it, you understand?

And America? Let me tell you what I say about America. If that universal God up there don’t destroy America, then that God owes Sodom and Gomorrah a serious apology, hm? OK? Supposed to be the most Christian society in the history of the planet, they sing that hymn, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” I tell them, “You weren’t there then and you wouldn’t be there now.”

And if Jesus came here today and started bugging the wrong people again, they’d give him the electric chair. And then we’d have Christians with electric chairs around their necks singing, “Were you there when they electrified my Lord?”

A very smart guy with some fascinating comments.

[G_j]

1. Good interview

very much worth reading

[LittleBlue]

2. Gregory has always been incisive like that

Old school and doesn't mince words.

[Gregorian]

3. Amen!

[Octafish]

4. I heard him say that electric chair thing in 1977 or so.

He spoke at Lake Michigan College near Benton Harbor. Crowd overflowed the auditorium.

Thank you for the heads-up, The Velveteen Ocelot!

[kelliekat44]

5. I disagree on one point. Teabaggers to affect policies by who they vote into office. That's the

problem.

[Octafish]

6. from Dick Gregory...

EXCERPT...

It sounds like you’d clearly disagree with people who think America has somehow entered a “post-racial” era. Do you think America is still, fundamentally, a racist country?

SNIP...

Who are you mad at? The Ku Klux Klan? Lynch mobs? How many black folks died from lynching as opposed to the effects of public policy? You think Negro-hating rednecks who can’t read or write, you think they determine public policy? You think the fucking Tea Party determines public policy? Let me tell you, if they do shut down the government that’s because the damn Rockefellers in power want it to be shut down. If that one percent didn’t want you to do something they could have tanks in your neighborhood and wipe you out before they’d let you get away with it, you understand?

The people who run this country, who run the world–I’m an old Negro. Coming up I wanted to be white because I thought white folks knew what was going on. Now I find out you white folks are as dumb as we are. Schools only a little bit better than ours. The same game they run on us they run on you.

Well, the buzzword the kids use these days for that is “intersectionality,” that all of us have the same problems in the end even if they manifest in different ways. You, for instance, were just as committed to fighting for women’s lib as for black civil rights–did you see those as connected?

Look at it this way. When I was a boy a woman who had a billion dollars couldn’t buy a house or a car unless a man signed for it. A white woman didn’t get to vote until 1921. Black men legally had the right to vote with the 13th/14th/15th Amendment. I live in a country of white men so vicious and evil, a white woman–that’s his momma, his daughter, his wife–she didn’t have the right to vote. Those white men, they gave me the legal right to vote before her.

And every time she went to trial, before she could vote, if she was framed for killing somebody she couldn’t get before a jury of her peers because you have to vote to serve on the jury. Men decided what she owned, men voted for her, men sent her to prison.

It’s supremacy. That’s what this is all about.

CONTINUED...

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/30/you_think_the_fcking_tea_party_determines_public_policy_dick_gregory_on_racism_the_1_percent_and_why_black_americans_are_angry_at_the_wrong_people/

[Gregorian]

7. This is exactly why Bernie Sanders is so important.

We finally have one person in government who gets it, and who speaks out.

Now if we can deliver him to the White House alive...

[el_bryanto]

8. It is definitely worth reading. nt