Joni S said:
You will appreciate the video from a black conservative. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7KmtezWVGU&feature=player_embedded
Awesome stuff, thanks for sharing.
Charlton Heston.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlton_heston#Political_activism
Tina Seward said:
2. My second assignment: Research and write about a white person that participated either in the civil rights movement or the abolitionist movement.
Good responses.
As if to prove my point, my local paper has run three articles already to celebrate Black History (aka White Racism) Month. In the first, black musicians, from Smokey Robinson to Chubby Checker, were asked if they'd ever experienced racism or verbal attacks in their careers. They, of course, all had stories to tell. Incredibly, Chubby Checker even said racism is possibly worse today than it was back then. (I've noticed that their memories of racism increase in direct proportion to how popular they remain.)
You can read more about that here:
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2011/01/ill_be_there_black_entertainer.html
Next there was the now-standard paean to Rosa Parks, which prompted me to write the truth about Parks (just posted in the History forum).
Yesterday, there was a story about black funerals and the lingering scent of racism that surrounds them. I kid you not.
One black author, interviewed for the article, "theorizes" that the reason blacks prefer casket burials to cremation is because burning the body "triggers collective fears about lynchings and subsequent mistreatment of corpses."
Uh, okay.
Another black author suggests that one of the reasons blacks "might" be reluctant to go to white funeral parlors is due to "lingering distrust over tales of whites’ mistreatment of slaves’ bodies."
"We live in the shadow of slavery," he intones.
"Still?" he is asked.
"Still."
Next week's story: after 130 years of integrated cemeteries, "old habits of subtle segregation die hard."
Read it here:
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/black_history_month_hallowed_g.html
These articles, it should be noted, are almost always written by whites, whites with a misplaced case of white guilt. It is actually an insult - to whites and blacks - to suggest that racism must have played a role in every black person's accomplishments, or to diminish that person's accomplishments by constantly asking about racism.
Why not, for example, write about how Chubby Checker had people of all colors doing the Twist? Why not simply praise the fact that whites were happily singing along to "The Duke of Earl" and "In The Still of the Night" without a thought as to the singer's race?
Better yet, why not let these talented musicians' accomplishments stand for themselves - without any racial commentary? Why not hail black traditions as unique to the black experience - without racism or slavery as the primary catalyst?
Only then will we truly be celebrating Black History Month.
