Political Statements
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Trying to pinpoint the one cause of the civil rights movement is like trying to find the one snowflake ultimately responsible for an avalanche; it doesn’t take into account all of the other snowflakes/factors which had to be there as well.
I remember watching my first graders doing work papers and coloring papers for Martin Luther King day back when I still taught, and turning to another teacher to say “None of them realize that they are living the principles that so many fought for- to them, being in a class with children of every color is perfectly normal and ordinary.” We were both old enough to remember when life hadn’t been that way, and were getting perilously close to misty eyed at that point. :o)
Please note that I’m not saying the Holocaust caused the civil rights movement; rather, I’m saying that it helped make the later success of the civil rights movement possible. I baited jinx with a somewhat leading question: what changed between Plessy and Brown? I don’t mean to deny credit to those who worked to make it happen, without whom it might have been a wasted opportunity, but I think the significance of the Holocaust to the civil rights movement is underplayed in the interest of identity politics. And yes, I’m aware that I may be exaggerating it in the interest of identity politics. 😉
No prob Mark; I had actually never seen it in that light, in spite of reading tons of books about the Holocauset as a teen (I was amazed/horrified by it from the time I read the Diary of Anne Frank and read everything my school and local library had). I had put a lot more of the credit on the fact that even if they were not officially integrated during WWII, there were many times when US soldiers of all colors worked, fought and died together, and that it would have been hard to go back to calling someone “boy” back home who had saved your butt in the European or asian theatres.
what i read in jinx's post was more that the events surrounding ww2 made the general populace more receptive to the civil rights movement, not necessarily that the main drive wasn't "the NAACP, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., etc.". though it is worth pointing out that lots of protesting and sit-ins and so on were organised and performed by racially diverse student groups. you can't beat racism or sexism or any other form of bigotry without the involvement of all parties.
this is one of the reasons the boom in identity politics makes me nervous. when you split off into your various enclaves (black and white, lgbt and straight, women and men) you make it much easier for people to conceptualize these struggles in an us-versus-them context. also, i've noticed from my own personal experience that the less time you spend around any particular group of people, the more stereotyped your opinions of them.
basically, i think that now, what we need is not necessarily a civil rights movement, but just to integrate, along all lines, because then we will realize that these lines are largely imaginary ones we have drawn in our heads and our cultures and that people are pretty much the same on one side of them as on the other.
also, re. plessy, i think part of the difference is the action of the phenomenon i was describing above. part of the issue with plessy was defining what race meant exactly in an increasingly mixed-racial world, where the chap sitting next to you could look white in every way, but be regarded legally and internally as black. as time went on, it must have become increasingly apparent to the moderates of the nation that the issue was largely a manufactured one.
i feel like the change in understanding between plessy and brown was basically that racism is bad, as glib as that may sound.
Good! I’m happy to be in good company, MtG.
I think war gradually creates enmity between the civilian populations of countries, sometimes directly through propaganda, but often just through the individual experiences of soldiers in an “away” war, and people in occupied territory in a “home” war. So Americans got progressively anti-German during WWII, just as they were getting anti-Japanese and (to a lesser extent, I think) anti-Italian.
But the USA in the 1930’s was a place of widespread racism and ethnic prejudice. There were lynchings all over the south, the KKK was strong, and loads of anti-semitism. The pseudoscience just seemed to bolster feelings that were already there. To me what looks like the biggest change was just coming to associate the enemy’s hated leader with the dreadful remorseless murder of women and children and old people just based on racial hatred.
It gave America’s own racists a little echo of Hitler’s angry face.
And I also think the capitulation of so many European populations, and their cooperation in the Holocaust, stirred feelings of shame and regret in a lot of Americans who claimed ancestry in those countries. The French, the Italians, the Czechs, the Dutch — they delivered up their own Jewish populations to the Nazis to murder?
Every bit of the self-reflection stirred by the sights and stories that emerged after the war had to have played a role in shifting people’s reactions to injustice based on racism.
Mind you, I’m not saying that the spectrum of racial & ethnic intolerance doesn’t survive, in the US and everywhere else. All you have to do is watch an episode of Ali G or the Borat movie and lo and behold, it’s a-li-i-i-ive.
I’m not saying that the spectrum of racial & ethnic intolerance doesn’t survive, in the US and everywhere else.
Although immigration policies drastically need an overhaul, there is a small but powerful voice of racism here in Arizona that fuels and is fueled by our illustrious “Sheriff Joe” Arpaio as well as our County Attorney. Tactics, reminiscent of Nazi Germany, are occurring on a regular basis: Sweeps of Hispanic neighborhoods to find “the illegals” have caused fear and loathing. With $40,000,000.00 (yeah that’s million) in lawsuits against Joe, and the same number of outstanding arrest warrants for really bad guys, it is amazing that this guy will probably get elected again. But the good-‘ol-boys like it when the Sheriff talks tough.
ETA: block-quoted the wrong stuff here – ????
(edited by Bry to fix the HTML)
The local/federal split on immigration enforcement is tricky. If I were approached by law enforcement authorities who wanted me to prove my US citizenship, on the spot, in order to avoid deportation, I might have trouble. A driver’s license isn’t proof of citizenship. That and a birth certificate would be sufficient identification for employment purposes, but I don’t normally carry my birth certificate. I have a passport, but I’m not in the habit of carrying it. Federal immigration authorities have implicitly recognized that I’m a US citizen, since it was on that basis that they approved my wife’s naturalization, but local police attempting to enforce federal immigration law might not have that information at their disposal. I suspect that Latino citizens in Maricopa county are in the habit of carrying their passports at all times. “Papers, please?”
It’s because of legitimate federal concern over out-of-control local authorities that the 14th amendment exists in the first place, and I’d like to see more federal oversight of dubious local police practices.
“Papers, please?”
Exactly. I almost wrote this.
There are rumors that IF Obama is elected, our Governor, Janet Napolitano, will be named as Head of Homeland Security. She has had her hands full with this issue, battling it out with Feds for more $, help at the border. She yanked some of Arpaio’s funding (he spends unwisely) but the $ is pouring in from his supporters to fund his sweeps. She will be speaking at the DNC tomorrow night if anyone on this thread is watching it. My guess is no.
I’m wondering whether a change at the top will have any consequences for DHS, and specifically for TSA. Maybe a replacement for Kip Hawley would eliminate some of the security theater one currently sees in airports.
Michelle Obama is giving a beautiful speech at the Democratic convention. She’s smart, she’s verbal, she’s logical, she comes across as principled and complex and genuine. It’s hard not to compare her with McCain’s conventional blond beer distributorship heiress and draw conclusions about the two men’s capacity to select people to connect and work with.
Well, I wouldn’t go that far, Jinx. No fan of McCain’s, I am not, however, ready to define his wife so narrowly. I need to hear her speak, then I’ll dis her ;D
Ms. Obama’s speech was spectacular. She was multidimensional and gave voters a chance to witness her genuine compassion.
She was great. She was great when she was on The Colbert Report a couple of months ago, too. I like her a lot.
I also thought Jim Leach’s speech was impressive.
Well, I’ve seen Cindy McCain on half a dozen interviews. I admire her willingness to participate in a charity directed towards relieving the suffering of small children, including kids in countries other than the US. I admire her decision to adopt the child who she brought back to the US for specialized treatment. But what I’m talking about is her one-dimensional quality. She projects a very acceptable persona and she knows what’s going on around her, but she never seems to have made that leap to examine her own assumptions or the common values she inherited from her family and upbringing, and forge them into a perspective of self-awareness.
Her husband strikes me as much the same, even though he has a lot more of the politician’s ability to spin information at the drop of a hat. At the very least, he doesn’t seem to study the things a leader needs to study at a time like this in American history, and he backtracks on firm statements of principle (the immigration policy, his comments on Jerry Falwell et al, etc.) in a way that makes me uneasy.
I don’t mean to make a bigger thing of this than I ought to, but it feels like I have to search the backgrounds of these candidates looking for information I can trust about what kind of leader they’ll make. The people they choose to associate with affects me more than many other factors, and the quality difference between Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain is, for me, kind of stark.
she never seems to have made that leap to examine her own assumptions or the common values she inherited from her family and upbringing
And she’s married to the presumptive Republican nominee. You expected maybe Birkenstocks and patchouli oil? 😉
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