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Something good to think about...
From Prof. Joe Olson, who began his background with guns as a civil rights worker who didn't intend to get killed and buried in a dam somewhere. (BTW, my late father held the first sit-in on a segregated bus, when he was stationed in a State with those requirements, back in WWII. He sat in the back and refused to move when threatened with arrest. In the end they just drove on. Sorry Ms. Parks, someone was going to tell you some day). Here's is Joe's take:
America really is an amazing country.
America just elected a black President.
In my life time,
(1) I've seen "Whites Only" water fountains and toilets in Texas in 1959.
What a shock that was because I was only 14, just discovering race, and just back from four years in Europe where nationality mattered a hundred times more that skin color. I made a lot of social errors, so to speak, in Texas because I simply didn't/don't "see" race at all.
(2) My father's co-pilot, who was a black officer, had to live on the east side of Abilene (20 miles from Dyess AFB) because that's where the nice black neighborhood was located.
(3) In my first real post-college job, in 1967, I had folks in bed sheets shooting at my co-workers and harassing me until I bought a gun and waved it at them. Merely because was I was white, had Missouri plates, and was helping Negroes (time-warp term) gain equal opportunity . (Yes, I was an "outside agitator" to them. Deliberately.) People like me had been killed just three years earlier.
(4) In another job during a law school summer I almost got a shitkicking because I picked up "the nigger" (the older black man who did the crap details on the painting crew) since I drove past his house on the way to our work sites. I think I was saved by two things: I could speak in the distinctive Piedmont accent (with expletives) and the white boys knew I was out of their social class (after all, I'd never been to Central Prison in Raleigh). Hurting me would bring bad karma (not their term) on them.
(4) While in the Air Force, 1970-74, (AF officially color blind since 1948) I had to tell a number of clients that the AF couldn't control what they thought, but we sure as hell could and would control how they acted. As I used to put it "You don't have to like them or invite them home for dinner, you just have to act like you do. Understand." Apparently, "acting" continued for a long enough time brings real change.
The White side of the civil right movement got it's kick-off during Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964 although MLK and other Southern Blacks started much earlier in Birmingham, Selma, etc.
1964 to 2008. A mere 44 years. There are three new generations out there who have never seen a "Colored" water fountain. That's good.
UPDATE: I read somewhere that the 3/5 compromise came about in the opposite manner from what we'd expect today. That is, the slave states wanted a slave to count for zero in the population, and the free states wanted a slave to count for one. That was because in the 1780s, the big concern wasn't power in the House of Reps, it was how to pay off Revolutionary War debt. Each State's population would determine not only its votes in the House, but also how much federal tax could be allocated to it, viz., how much it would pay toward that debt.
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I don't understand it either, Tom. But I expect a certain amount of hating regarding color may come our way with the lessons of the past forgotten. It too, will be a hatred of black. Black steel in our case.
Here's something good to think about: this election has put a black family in the White House as something other than the live-in help. That, to me, means that affirmative action worked - i.e. that race-based preferences are not needed any more. If Obama really wants to show that he cares about the words of the Constitution, that he's the President of all of the people, then he'll propose legislation to eliminate race-based preferences in all school admissions and hiring.
Plus, he'd also NOT propose or sign any legislation or Executive Orders that will reduce our RKBA-related liberties. If he can't do this, then I won't trust him or like him in any fashion (but it'll have everything to do with his black heart and nothing whatsoever to do with his skin color).
It was painful during the election having to explain to my nine-year-old daughter colored/whites only fountains, white sheets, segregated schools, and other wonderful aspects of our recent history. I did this so that she'd have some understanding of the historical significance of what just happened, despite the fact that I didn't support Obama due to his policies.
And then it occurred to me: that some people should be separated from a group because they are a different color was a totally foreign and incomprehensible idea to my daughter.
It's nice to think that, at least on that issue, we may be moving forward as a nation.
Very commendable post Mr. Hardy.
Yes, I remember not being allowed to sit in the back of the bus because as my grandmother explained, "That's where the darkies sit." I remember not being allowed to sit in the balcony at the local "picture show" because that area was reserved for Negroes. I remember white and colored drinking fountains and remember being confused because both fountains were fed from the same water pipe. I remember seeing blacks seated at a counter in the local cafe's kitchen and them being required to enter the cafe though the back door. I never went to school with black kids. They had their own two classroom school house down in "the flats". Black kids didn't ride school buses - I wondered at the time how they managed to get to school. A white lady used to bring a black mother and her children to church, but that didn't last long as the white lady was probably talked to rather severely by the Elders of the church.
Times, they have changed, and the change was long overdue. I did not support Obama nor McCain. Skin colour had nothing to do with it - policies and past action did for both of them.
Questions about
I was a small child when I saw grainy footage of protesters on the news carrying signs that said, "I am a man." It was the Memphis janitorial strike, and I had to ask to find out what it meant.
When negroes ran for elected office, I noticed that a week or so before the election, the refrain came out, "I'm not against them running for office, but he's just not the right kind.
This time I heard the same thing about Sarah Palin. Every partisan I tried to explain it to, just didn't get it.
Feminists who don't support women are called "hot dogs" -- pink on the outside and pigs on the inside.
It's not about race or sex, it's about ideology.
Brandon wrote: "It was painful during the election having to explain to my nine-year-old . . ."
I hope everyone out there reading this stops and thinks very long about how hard and painful it is for me, a high school history, civics, and economics teacher (and absolute Second Amendment supporter), to explain to your children the original versions of some of the U.S.A.'s founding documents.
3/5 of a vote? 3/5 human? How does anyone square that with the self-evident truth that all men are created equal?
I don't sugar coat the sh!t included in some parts of some of our founding documents.
I tell them to draw their own conclusions but to take seriously the parts that make sense and that offer protection from the government to ALL AMERICANS TODAY (i.e., the 2nd Amendment), no matter how f^%*ed up the original version of our constitution was.
I don't like or trust Obama--but not because he has African ancestry.
Ethnic and physiognomic dissimilarity to me has always been irrelevant.
I don't like Obama because he has left a record of intentions and desires in which he has expressed the will to dramatically change the content of the constitution and to delete parts of it--the part that protects our physical ability to defend ourselves against all enemies, foreign and domestic . . . and elected . . .
The initial impact of his election might be mollified race relations.
The ultimate impact--if he attempts to damage the constitution--might not be.
I'm hoping for the best.
The worst is almost unthinkable.
Slaves did NOT have 3/5 of a vote. They had NO vote.
Slave masters were awarded 3/5 of a vote for each slave he owned. This meant that the slave states were greatly over-represented in Congress to the detriment of the abolisionists' cause.
Southerners wanted every slave to be fully counted so the South's power would be even greater. Northerners only wanted those who had a vote to be counted for the number of representatives.
A similar situation is happening now. Illegal aliens ARE counted in the Federal Census. Even though those who are not citizens cannot vote, our urban areas are over-represented in the House, and those Reps are usually anti-gun-rights.
I guess Akhil Reed Amar would be surprised to know that the 3/5 clause wasn't a ploy by the South to gain control over the North by being able to pad their reprehensible and senilator numbers. He harped on that throughout his book, America's Constitution, a biography.
I was born in '76 and I've never seen color.
I can't understand why you would hate someone on their appearance as there are many other more pressing reasons to hate someone.