Quote:
Originally Posted by BullDog
I already posted this in another thread, but I will post it here because the connection is meaningful to me. Today is the 55th anniversary of the day that Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white person. I am 48 years old. That means people slightly older than me went through a time, particularly in the South, where people of color were supposed to sit in the back of the buses and be segregated on what they could do and where they could go based on race- there were laws on the books (Jim Crow) that supported some of those things. What is happening in Arizona (and elsewhere) reminds me of those times.
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Back when I lived in California, there was a ballot measure to eliminate affirmative action at both the level of state hiring, contracting and education. About a week before the vote, I was on the BART and listening to these two women going back and forth about how they couldn't understand why THEY had to be 'punished' because 'they never owned slaves' and all the other kinds of crap that white people feel justified to say when talking about civil rights and they're not talking about how much they admire Martin Luther King, Jr. When I could stand it no more I turned around, asked if they minded if I added some perspective and said the following:
"All of the following statements are true:
I am the first member of my immediate family to have never spent a day in segregated schooling.
I am the first member of my immediate family to have no memory of using a colored-only bathroom or water fountain (which doesn't mean I never did, just that I was too young to remember it ever happening).
I am the first member of my immediate family to have only lived in an integrated neighborhood.
I am the first member of my family to have never used a library or swimming pool on the 'coloreds-only' day.
I am not yet forty years old."
They were stopped in their tracks because I think they *genuinely* believed the picture of the history of black people in this country they were taught in high school which, more or less, goes like this:
1776 - America is founded. Black people are here but the less said about them the better. Except for Crispus Attucks.
Black people do nothing of much significance nor does anything of much significance happen to us until 1863.
1865 -- Slavery ends at the close of the Civil war
1865 - 1879 or so--Reconstruction. Not a whole lot of note happens here.
1955 -- For no adequately explored reason Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of the bus.
1963 -- For no adequately explored reason, some preacher named King gives a speech on the Washington Mall. Every white person who will eventually run for public office after 1989 marches with him.
1964 -- Civil rights and voting rights acts pass. The reasons these laws are necessary is left somewhat vague leaving the impression that white people had simply failed to be nice to blacks.
1968 -- Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated.
One thing I'd love to change in this country is to reset our sense of history. I'm only half-joking when I say that for Americans history is like this:
History--anything that happened more than 48 hours ago.
Ancient history -- anything that happened more than a year ago
Antiquity -- anything that happened more than 5 years ago
Lost to the mists of time what no living person can remember -- anything that happened more than 10 years ago
The dinosaurs are the only witnesses -- Anything that happened 20 or more years ago.
You mean there was an Earth then? -- Anything that happened prior to 1970
You mean the Universe existed? -- Anything that happened prior to 1960
The Big Bang -- 1950
We act as if 1960 is a year no living person could remember but that's only 50 years ago.
Cheers
Aj