The Truth of ‘Black Lives Matter’

[lovemydog]

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD SEPT. 3, 2015

The Republican Party and its acolytes in the news media are trying to demonize the protest movement that has sprung up in response to the all-too-common police killings of unarmed African-Americans across the country. The intent of the campaign — evident in comments by politicians like Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky — is to cast the phrase “Black Lives Matter” as an inflammatory or even hateful anti-white expression that has no legitimate place in a civil rights campaign.

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas crystallized this view when he said the other week that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were he alive today, would be “appalled” by the movement’s focus on the skin color of the unarmed people who are disproportionately killed in encounters with the police. This argument betrays a disturbing indifference to or at best a profound ignorance of history in general and of the civil rights movement in particular. From the very beginning, the movement focused unapologetically on bringing an end to state-sanctioned violence against African-Americans and to acts of racial terror very much like the one that took nine lives at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in June.

The civil rights movement was intended to make Congress and Americans confront the fact that African-Americans were being killed with impunity for offenses like trying to vote, and had the right to life and to equal protection under the law. The movement sought a cross-racial appeal, but at every step of the way used expressly racial terms to describe the death and destruction that was visited upon black people because they were black.

[lovemydog]

1. part 2 of 2

Even in the early 20th century, civil rights groups documented cases in which African-Americans died horrible deaths after being turned away from hospitals reserved for whites, or were lynched — which meant being hanged, burned or dismembered — in front of enormous crowds that had gathered to enjoy the sight.

The Charleston church massacre has eerie parallels to the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. — the most heinous act of that period — which occurred at the height of the early civil rights movement. Four black girls were murdered that Sunday. When Dr. King eulogized them, he did not shy away from the fact that the dead had been killed because they were black, by monstrous men whose leaders fed them “the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism.” He said that the dead “have something to say” to a complacent federal government that cut back-room deals with Southern Dixiecrats, as well as to “every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice.” Shock over the bombing pushed Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act the following year.

During this same period, freedom riders and voting rights activists led by the young John Lewis offered themselves up to be beaten nearly to death, week after week, day after day, in the South so that the country would witness Jim Crow brutality and meaningfully respond to it. This grisly method succeeded in Selma, Ala., in 1965 when scenes of troopers bludgeoning voting rights demonstrators compelled a previously hesitant Congress to acknowledge that black people deserved full citizenship, too, and to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Along the way, there was never a doubt as to what the struggle was about: securing citizenship rights for black people who had long been denied them.

The “Black Lives Matter” movement focuses on the fact that black citizens have long been far more likely than whites to die at the hands of the police, and is of a piece with this history. Demonstrators who chant the phrase are making the same declaration that voting rights and civil rights activists made a half-century ago. They are not asserting that black lives are more precious than white lives. They are underlining an indisputable fact — that the lives of black citizens in this country historically have not mattered, and have been discounted and devalued. People who are unacquainted with this history are understandably uncomfortable with the language of the movement. But politicians who know better and seek to strip this issue of its racial content and context are acting in bad faith. They are trying to cover up an unpleasant truth and asking the country to collude with them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/opinion/the-truth-of-black-lives-matter.html?

(Cross-posted in the General Discussion forum. Posted here by request of my friend Number23.)

[Number23]

2. I don't know what it is but bigots, assholes and racists just LOVE quoting themselves some MLK

It's as though they think that quoting this man incessantly will wash away their own sins. But as has been pointed out over and over and over again, alot of these folks acting like they worship at the altar of MLK in 2015 would have hated him in 1960 too. And they would have complained about his timing, his tone and his means just like they are doing with #BLM.

And before folks get all bunched up about Huckabee's idiotic comments that King would have been "appalled" by #BLM's focus on skin color, I have read too many times to count right here on DU how King wasn't "just" a civil rights hero and that he knew that the issues were classism and not racism. So there may be a bunch of ignorance and stupidity on the right about King and what he was about but that is by no means a Republican trait alone.

K&R

[lovemydog]

3. I agree.

It's sad how this great man is used & misinterpreted by people on the right and left for their narrow arguments. I could write another rant about it.

I'll honor his spirit by saying I know together we can combat the forces of ignorance & hatred with light, expansiveness and love. Hope you enjoy a wonderful weekend.

[Number23]

8. "I could write another rant about it." And I'd love to read it

You posted so eloquently in one of the (seemingly endless) threads where a particular poster kept posting a cherry picked and deliberately misinterpreted MLK quote. Your thoughts on this have been beautiful and very much appreciated.

[lovemydog]

10. In the words of MLK:

'That was some of the funniest damn shit I've ever read.'

[brer cat]

6. I am old enough to remember

those days, Number23, and you are absolutely right. It is mind-blowing to me to hear some of my older relatives and acquaintances speak of MLK respectfully when I remember very well how they spoke of him then: "agitator" when they were being polite, but usually more bluntly "riling up the n******". He did not know his "place" and that, at least in the South, was a mortal sin.

Overall, I see it as another example of co-opting by whites. Surely a man so revered cannot belong just to Blacks, but must become a shared asset; thus the need to reformat his movement as one of class not race. Moreover, it is a way to rehabilitate his image (shared by many whites) from an angry Black man agitating for rights we were too willing to deny into a softer, gentler man-of-all-people who was simply trying to lift all boats, thereby making him acceptable as a modern day hero for whites. The denial of his mission, of his life's work, as being about racism permits us to cleanse our souls of our racist past without admitting our guilt.

Which leads us to #BLM who dare to put our racism front and center once again. When I hear the criticism of their tone or disrespect I swear I can hear the echo from ages past "they don't know their place."

[Number23]

9. "I see it as another example of co-opting by whites" Absolutely YES. YES!!

THIS is why you see the rush to talk about his advocacy on behalf of the sanitation workers in Tennessee. As so many of us have tried to point out time and again, the racial makeup of sanitation workers TODAY is probably heavily made up of blacks. So one could only imagine what it must have been like 50 years ago.

JAG, beyond fed up with the co-opting and the ignorance and stupidity, actually posted a crazy informative rebuttal to the ignorance being spewed here that MLK was advocating in Tennessee because he realized that class was more important as race. OF COURSE THOSE SANITATION WORKERS WERE BLACK!! Black people were his life's work. Black people were the reason that he went to jail! The reason he was killed!!

Of course he was anti war, including the Vietnam War. He was a preacher who advocated for love and tolerance. And YET AGAIN, black folks are over represented in the armed forces in 2015, let alone in the 1960s! Of course he didn't want his people killed fighting for a country that would not even recognize them as people with rights!!

The co-opting of his love and his legacy by the clueless is something that I simply cannot abide. I am from the South. I grew up visting Southern black households where every black person over the age of 50 had portraits of three people on their walls -- JFK, Jesus and MLK. MLK was not on those walls because he believed that the "real enemy" was classicism! He was there because he knew what those blacks also folks knew -- that the enemy was and always would be RACISM.

Moreover, it is a way to rehabilitate his image (shared by many whites) from an angry Black man agitating for rights we were too willing to deny into a softer, gentler man-of-all-people who was simply trying to lift all boats, thereby making him acceptable as a modern day hero for whites. The denial of his mission, of his life's work, as being about racism permits us to cleanse our souls of our racist past without admitting our guilt.

Yes!!! Absolutely yes!

Which leads us to #BLM who dare to put our racism front and center once again. When I hear the criticism of their tone or disrespect I swear I can hear the echo from ages past "they don't know their place."

I hear it as well, brer cat. And the fact that there are so many -- including a spattering of very angry and confused people of color as evident by the small number of blacks calling #BLM a "pro Hillary group" or high fiving Ben Carson for trashing #BLM -- denouncing this group, calling them "corrupt" or "stupid" or even "subhuman" when not questioning if they are agents of the right wing does nothing but bolster my deep seated fear that racism will not be over anytime soon and that it is something that my children will have to contend with, no matter how fervently I wish otherwise.

[brer cat]

11. I worry about your children too.

I am generally an optimist, but the reaction to #BLM has rocked me unlike anything in a long time. If ever there was a cause that was just and urgently necessary, that should have the full-throated support of every person who identifies as liberal, progressive, democrat...hell, even human...this was it, and the timing is RIGHT NOW. The brickbats being thrown by people of color and those renown allies we hear so much about demonstrates once again how deeply rooted and misunderstood racism is. I fear unless Monsanto comes up with a Roundup for ignorance, it will continue to sprout.

Too many of us are complacent, we are too invested our own little world. We are mules, but first we need that two by four.

[kwassa]

12. I saw this billboard as a small child on the way to Florida with my family ....

[Number23]

15. Yep. King was a Commie. The anti-Christ who was "riling up the n*ggers"

He was hated with a capital H. And he knew it.

And he knew WHO was hating him too and it wasn't just white conservatives in the South. He had just as many harsh words for white "liberals" as he did their Southern cousins. Proof #489,772,594 that the "he cared more about class than race" crew has no fucking clue what they're talking about.

[Stellar]

16. I thought they hated Malcolm X with a passion more than they did King.

I see even Malcolm is beginning to get some appreciation/respect these days.

This guy see's Malcolm's speech as prophetic but I see it as nothing has changed in all of that time.

[Number23]

17. They had plenty of hate for both of them. Malcolm was an easier target because he was more militant

but King was not too far behind.

[Starry Messenger]

7. Rec.

[pansypoo53219]

4. i am so glad fuckabee trails in the polls.

[JustAnotherGen]

5. Say it again

From the very beginning, the movement focused unapologetically on bringing an end to state-sanctioned violence against African-Americans and to acts of racial terror very much like the one that took nine lives at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in June.

I almost wish it was Black Lives Matter Too just so people would knock it off.

[randys1]

13. No, that would be like "Gays can marry too, please!" "Let Blacks live, please!" "Dont kill Women

in back alleys, please!"

Fuck that.

There is a new pro choice movement i forgot the name to it, and they talked about how all oppressed minorities including Women need to stop apologizing for wanting equality.

Easy for me to say, I know.

[JustAnotherGen]

14. You - I adore!