Tag Archives: Civil rights movement

The Presidential Campaign Of Joe Biden Continues To Sadden Those Of Us Who Are Watching Closely

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I’m sure Joe Biden is a nice man. He definitely has a beautiful smile. But I truly believe that he is not the man he was even five years ago. He has always been known for gaffes, but he seems to have taken that to a new level since campaigning for President.

Townhall posted an article yesterday about the latest questionable statement by the former Vice-President.

The article reports:

Joe Biden on Thursday compared the death of George Floyd to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, saying Floyd’s death had a bigger global “impact” than King’s.

At an economic reopening roundtable in Philadelphia, the former vice president spoke of how the advent of smartphones had precipitated global participation in the movement against police brutality and racial injustice.

“Even Dr. King’s assassination did not have the worldwide impact that George Floyd’s death did,” Biden said.

“It’s just like television changed the Civil Rights movement for the better when they saw Bull Connor and his dogs ripping the clothes off of elderly black women going to church and firehoses ripping the skin off of young kids,” he continued.

“What happened to George Floyd — now you got how many people around the country, millions of cell phones. It’s changed the way everybody’s looking at this,” he continued. “Look at the millions of people marching around the world.”

There is a lot to unpack in that statement. First of all, the civil rights movement has been part of America since the 1950’s. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a pioneer in that movement. There have been great strides made in that movement, many as a result of the peaceful manner in which Dr. King conducted himself. George Floyd was not working to further the rights of black America. He really had not accomplished a whole lot in his young life. His murder simply provided an excuse for the culture of outrage to mobilize. My second point is that Joe Biden has been in Washington since 1973. If things are so bad, what has he been doing for the past forty-seven years?

The death of George Floyd was horrible. It should never have happened. However, I am not sure that in the heat of the moment we have begun to put his death in context. The bad behavior of one policeman should not be used to condemn all police, just was the bad behavior of the protesters who have decided to riot should not be used to condemn all protesters. How many people have been killed by the protesters? What does that accomplish?

On A Personal Note

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Fifty-two years ago I was working as a temporary employee in Memphis, Tennessee, while my husband was stationed in Millington, Tennessee. There was a lot of tension in the city as the city was in the midst of a garbage strike and Martin Luther King, Jr., had come into the city in the hope of calming things down. Unfortunately that was not what happened. I commuted to work by bus, but was told not to take the bus home because the crowds had become out of control and were flipping the buses over. My husband left the base to come pick me up, and thankfully we arrived at the place where we were staying safely. Later that day, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was not a perfect man, but he was a brave man with a dream. If the leaders of the civil rights movement that arose after his death had pursued his dream, we would be in a very different place. Martin Luther King, Jr., stated, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” That concept should apply to all people. Skin color should never be a part of any decision regarding employment, criminal behavior, admission to any organization, etc. That was his dream. We need to remember that when we see people attempting to use skin color to gain an advantage. We can never fully compensate for the sins of the past, but we can acknowledge them, move on, and not repeat them.

A Voice Of Reason From The Political Left

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On Tuesday Alan Dershowitz commented on the recent activism by the political left. Professor Dershowitz’s comments were posted in a Washington Times article posted on Tuesday.

Some of Professor Dershowitz’s comments:

…the movement sweeping the country to take down Confederate-era statues that some find offensive is setting a dangerous precedent.

“Do not glorify the violent people who are now tearing down the statues,” he said. “Many of these people, not all of them, many of these people are trying to tear down America.

 “Antifa is a radical anti-American, anti-free market, communist, socialist, hard, hard left censorial organization that tries to stop speakers on campuses from speaking,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “They use violence. And just because they’re opposed to fascism and to some of these monuments shouldn’t make them heroes of the liberals.”

“I’m a liberal, and I think it’s the obligation of liberals to speak out against the hard left radicals just like it’s the obligation of conservatives to speak out against the extremism of the hard right,” he added.

…“We have to use this as an educational moment,” he said. “We have to take some of the statues that were put up more recently, for example, during the Civil Rights Movement and perhaps move them to museums where they can be used to teach young students about how statues are intended sometimes for bad purposes, to glorify negatives and to hold back positive developments.”

“But the idea of willy-nilly going through and doing what Stalin did — just erasing history and re-writing it to serve current purposes — does pose a danger, and it poses a danger of educational malpractice, of missing opportunities to educate people, and of going too far,” he said.

Mr. Dershowitz argued that the movement against Confederate-era statues ignores other discriminated groups in America, like Jews, women, and the Japanese.

“Once you start rewriting history of African Americans in this country, you have to start rewriting history of discrimination against many, many other groups,” he said. “Look, we’re both a nation of immigrants and a nation of discrimination against immigrants. That’s an important history for us to remember.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our political leaders currently following the crowd on the rewriting of history would listen to the words of Professor Dershowitz.

I Don’t Think This Helps Us ‘All Get Along’

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The Huffington Post recently updated an article they had posted in March. The article is entitled, “Ethnic Minorities Deserve Safe Spaces Without White People.” Wow. Does that mean that white people also deserve safe spaces without ethnic minorities? If it doesn’t go both ways is it discrimination? Racism?

The article states:

Last week The Ryersonian reported on an incident that involved two first-year journalism students who were turned away from an event organized by Racialized Students’ Collective because they are white. Since then there has been a lot of commentary on the piece and a lot of debate — a lot of the criticism is valid.

There are two sides to the story: 1) the media has a right to attend public events and report on matters that are in the public interest. The student media needs to cover initiatives that are happening on campus so that we draw attention to them and in turn create awareness (The Ryersonian reported that one student said he was covering the meeting for an assignment). 2) Marginalized groups have a right to claim spaces in the public realm where they can share stories about the discrimination they have faced without judgment and intrusion from anyone else.

I am sorry for any minority that has been treated badly. My ancestry is Irish and Jewish, so I suspect my ancestors might have dealt with some prejudice during their lifetimes, but that was then and this is now.

I would have no reason to judge any person who is a minority talking about discrimination. To me it would be a learning experience. I lived in the American South before the Civil Rights Movement–some of the things I heard and saw were not pretty. I had assumed we were past that until a black friend told me about her children’s experiences getting served in some stores in the South. We have a long way to go before everyone is treated well, but I believe we have made considerable progress in the right direction.

I am not sure excluding white people from an event is going to improve relations between white people and minorities–I think it just builds higher walls that impede communication. Maybe if white people were included, they could learn how minorities feel and what they perceive as mistreatment. Bringing people together tends to work better than separating them. A safe environment can be created for all groups.

Twisted Logic

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Breitbart.com posted an article today about President Obama’s remarks about the “Bloody Sunday” civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, fifty years ago.

The article reports:

Obama, who has enacted two executive amnesty programs for illegal immigrants since 2012, said that deporting DREAMers “is not true to the spirit” of the civil rights movement.

“The notion that some kid that was brought here when he was two or three years old might somehow be deported at the age of 20 or 25 even though they’ve grown up as American, that’s not who we are,” he reportedly said in an interview with Sirius XM’s Joe Madison, according to The Hill. “That’s not true to the spirit of what the march on Selma was about.”

I don’t even know where to begin. I have sympathy for the people who were brought here as children and had no voice in the matter. However, I also have sympathy for those people waiting in line and paying the fees involved to come to America legally.

We don’t have to deport these children. However, if they have broken laws or committed crimes (that includes identity theft and social security fraud), they need to be sent back with their families to whatever country they are from. There is an attitude that comes from breaking the law that is not needed in America. Many of these grown-up children have families in other countries that their parents routinely send money to. If laws have been broken, these grown-up children and their families need to be sent back to their relatives. If they have kept out of trouble, they need to be put on a path to citizenship–but not given instant citizenship. They need work permits, but do not need to be eligible for welfare benefits.

Meanwhile, the civil rights movement has no relationship to illegal aliens. The civil rights movement was a group of American citizens standing up for their rights. Illegal aliens are here illegally. They have already broken the law. We need to remember that.

The article concludes:

As Breitbart News has noted, “the civil rights movement of the 1960s was about ensuring that black Americans received all of the rights they were due as citizens of the United States while today’s pro-amnesty movement is about demanding full rights for non-citizens who entered the country illegally.”

But that has not stopped amnesty advocates like Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who has said that the amnesty movement is “our Selma,” from trying to link the amnesty movement to the black civil rights movement.

Amnesty advocates will reportedly flock to Selma this weekend to try to push the false narrative that amnesty for illegal immigrants is akin to the black civil rights movement.