I'm appalled

Originally posted by whodey
But the world is continuously changing and Dr. King has long been dead. So what are we doing today about changing the world for the better like Dr. King did?

there is way too many people in the world now to change it, and too many corruptions. one example is porn stars are celebrities now (although in the act they look like skanks) and rappers are celebrities and theyre talking about killing and people think it is cool! you cant compete with the media

Originally posted by EcstremeVenom
there is way too many people in the world now to change it, and too many corruptions. one example is porn stars are celebrities now (although in the act they look like skanks) and rappers are celebrities and theyre talking about killing and people think it is cool! you cant compete with the media

You are correct. With that kind of attitude there is absolutly nothing you can do to help. As I said before, don't look at it as saving the world because I got news for you, the world does not want to be saved. If Christ can't convince the entire world to change how much better can you do? However, we can make a difference in individual lives. I know because someone made a difference in mine and I try to help others in their lives. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not but you can't loose heart or it will only get worse that much faster. I say that if you so much as try to make a difference you are a success. Those who give up or don't try are the only failures.

Originally posted by whodey
However, we can make a difference in individual lives.

youre exactly right, it has to be a personal relationship to make a difference

Originally posted by EcstremeVenom
youre exactly right, it has to be a personal relationship to make a difference

Not necessarily. Did Dr. King have a personal relationship with everyone that he inspired?

Originally posted by whodey
Not necessarily. Did Dr. King have a personal relationship with everyone that he inspired?

the difference is the blacks wanted change, so they went with it. now, the world sees nothing wrong and doesnt think it needs change.

Originally posted by EcstremeVenom
the difference is the blacks wanted change, so they went with it. now, the world sees nothing wrong and doesnt think it needs change.

Well if you don't see a need to change then you will not change. I think this is only common sense. After all, change is painful so no one wants to do it, rather, people do it only out of necessity. So perhaps if nothing else it is our duty is to wake people up and see the need for change.

Originally posted by whodey
So perhaps if nothing else it is our duty is to wake people up and see the need for change.

sure

Originally posted by kirksey957
that here it is nearing the end of the damn day and no one has mentioned that today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I guess he wasn't pure enough. I guess he didn't believe "just right" or "enough." Oh yea, he did time in jail too. I can't find any TV preachers today that did time in jail. Well, Jim Bakker, but he deserved it.

Share your thoughts about Dr. King. Why is he important today?

Appreciate the sentiment, but why would you expect to see something on MLK in the spirituality forum, since his protest was civic-minded?

Originally posted by whodey
I can hardly believe what I am hearing. You are saying that Dr. King was a failure? What a pompous thing to say, especially for someone who has a national holiday given to them to remember them and saying it on their day of remeberance. I don't see any Nullifidian day of rememberance. What does that make you in comparison? You sir should be ashamed.

See? I told you all that you wouldn't like my opinion on things. And I didn't say that he was entirely ineffective, merely ineffective from the standpoint of what his supporters believed in. He's not ineffective at diluting black anger and preventing it from becoming something that could have genuinely challenged white privilege.

I would say that Dr. King was just as much a failure as Abraham Lincoln was a failure when he released the slaves and gave them their freedom.

Now there's a historical analogy I have no problem with. Abraham Lincoln was a failure viewed from the standpoint of liberating slaves. In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to rebellious states which had not already been conquered. Union slave states, like Delaware, and conquered Confederate states were under no obligation to free their slaves until full ratification of the 13th amendment, which didn't happen in Lincoln's lifetime.

I would say that Dr. King was just as much of a failure as Jackie Robinson was a failure for being the first black professional baseball player in history and enduring death threats and continuous taunting without retaliating and, in turn, laying the ground work for Black professional athletes who came after him.

Jackie Robinson was not the first black professional baseball player in history. You're completely ignoring the Negro Leagues, which was a professional all-black league completely equal to (and often surpassing) the play in white teams. The rest of your examples similarly whitewash (if you'll forgive the pun) history. We can talk about Harriet Tubman helping slaves to flee, but not Nat Turner helping slaves to resist oppression. We can talk about Frederick Douglass, but not WEB DuBois.

I suppose your definition of a success is nothing short of the Messiah returning and putting an end to all sin as we know it?

No, mainly because I'm an atheist. In my view, there have been many successes in history. Stonewall was a success. It launched the gay rights movement into the forefront of the discourse, and showed that gay people weren't going to be passive victims of a heterosexist state. Nat Turner's Rebellion was a success not for ending slavery, but for raising the cost of oppression. The Palestinian resistance is a success because it's obvious that the Jews have no use for Palestinians, except as cheap labor, and they have a lot of use for their land, and therefore their continued existence is testament to how tough they've made it for the Israelis to wipe them out. The anti-WTO movement was a success for turning a self-congratulatory system into one which was then seen to be publicly apologizing for its excesses, and so on.

I don't deny that there remains some serious problems in regards to African Americans and discrimination. However, there is a difference between being greatful for the progress that has been made and continuing to build upon those foundations verses defecating on the tombs of men and women who have valiently and bravely made progress despite their historic and current plight. Its all about your attitude man.

My attitude is that a racist, heterosexist, patriarchal system throwing a few bones to the people is not notable progress. It gives us nothing to build upon. Instead, it creates an unequal dynamic in which the oppressor governs the time and manner of the so-called 'equality' it chooses to dole out. And if it doesn't choose to dole it out, like gay marriage currently, then there's nothing to do but passively wait upon it until it does. This is unproductive.

Originally posted by Nullifidian
My attitude is that a racist, heterosexist, patriarchal system throwing a few bones to the people is not notable progress. It gives us nothing to build upon. Instead, it creates an unequal dynamic in which the oppressor governs the time and manner of the so-called 'equality' it chooses to dole out. And if it doesn't choose to dole it out, like gay marriage ...[text shortened]... , then there's nothing to do but passively wait upon it until it does. This is unproductive.[/b]

I see, so African Americans are no better off today than they were hundreds of years ago. All that was done to enhance their lives up until this time can be considered nothing more than dung. There is nothing to build upon? Are you serious?

You know its funny that you bring up the Jews. They have encountered oppression since they were held captive as slaves in Egypt for about 400 years or so. Then they fought their way into the Holy Land and then were routinely invaded and finally led away into captivity and ended up being spread throughout Europe. They then encountered various persecutions within Europe being made second class citizens and being exhiled from various antisemetic countries and even being murdered in large numbers. Then all of the hatred towards the Jews climaxed during the Holocaust killing millions. God forbid they would want a home land of some kind to go to. Now they are being threatened by other countries to be cast into the sea! I think you will find oppression ONLY among people you seem to care about such as gays/Palestinians/etc. Everyone else, such as the Jews, can just all go to hades.


So tell me, when does oppression end and for whom? Has there ever been a time when oppression was nonexistent? Where is your Utopia other than in your imagination? You see oppression is just a byproduct of our fallen nature. You have three options for fighting such oppression. You can ignore it, fight it peacefully, or fight it with physical violence. I assume you prefer the later? So be it, and let me know where it gets you much like your Palestinian counterparts. Send your children out to blow themselves up in the streets to fight for your cause and then get back to me and tell me how much progress has been made.

If you really think that fighting fire with fire works, why is it that blacks seem to be better off today than they were 50 years ago compared to Palestinians who seem to be worse off than they were 50 years ago?

Originally posted by whodey
I see, so African Americans are no better off today than they were hundreds of years ago. All that was done to enhance their lives up until this time can be considered nothing more than dung. There is nothing to build upon? Are you serious?

Yes I am serious. You're supposedly a chess player, and you should be looking at it from the point of view of strategy. If you played a completely reactive, defensive game, never once going on the offense and letting your opponent call all the shots, then you'd lose. Now consider if you were playing a game where the opponent got to write all the rules in his favor, and for a few hundred years had you chained up where you had to make moves for him when he demanded it and no moves to further your own interest. Ameliorating the de jure inequality of the game is not enough, but once you've done that, where does your strategy of passive 'resistance' get you? You now have nobody to petition, nobody to march on, etc. etc. so what now? In the case of the civil rights movement, you dissipate into irrelevancy until you can no longer sustain any sort of political profile at all, while the inequitable system goes merrily on its way.

You know its funny that you bring up the Jews. They have encountered oppression since they were held captive as slaves in Egypt for about 400 years or so.

Never happened. Read Finkelstein and Silberman's The Bible Unearthed.

Then they fought their way into the Holy Land and then were routinely invaded and finally led away into captivity and ended up being spread throughout Europe.

Or they moved into areas which had already been abandoned.

They then encountered various persecutions within Europe being made second class citizens and being exhiled from various antisemetic countries and even being murdered in large numbers. Then all of the hatred towards the Jews climaxed during the Holocaust killing millions.

Yes it did. And I applaud the uprisings in Warsaw, Sobribor, and Auschwitz which raised the cost to their oppressors, diverted Nazi attention, and may have ended up saving thousands by slowing the Nazi death machine.

God forbid they would want a home land of some kind to go to.

I have no problem with them having a home land of some kind to go to. I merely object to them starving Palestinians, establishing an apartheid state, massacreing them, etc.

Now they are being threatened by other countries to be cast into the sea!

On the contrary, the people most likely to be cast into the sea would be the Palestinians, except in certain reservations to be employed as cheap labor. Have you ever been to Israel? It's a cross between oasis and desert, and strangely enough the Israelis have the oasis and the Palestinians the unproductive desert every time, even when the oasis part is over the 1967 borders (let alone the 1948).

I think you will find oppression ONLY among people you seem to care about such as gays/Palestinians/etc. Everyone else, such as the Jews, can just all go to hades.

Palestinians are not allowed to drive on the paved roads. They have to drive on dangerous dirt roads. They get shot at when they fish in Gazan waters, even though Gaza is allegedly "theirs", Israeli military boats blockade the Gazan waters, Israeli airplanes block Gaza's sky, and then they can't even drive on main roads that cut through the heart of their territory. They have to pay the Israelis for their water, while the settlers build houses and pools with Palestinian labor, and yet the Palestinians can't get any money of theirs from their exports (which have to go through the Israeli Customs system). Children throwing stones can be shot from tanks, there's an apartheid wall built over the internationally-agreed 1967 boundaries, and while the media worldwide complains that Hamas won't recognize Israel, nobody ever asks why they should since Israel doesn't recognize Palestine.

Go to Palestine, look at the sum total of that and much more, and then come back and tell me with a straight face that the Israelis are the oppressed ones.

And stop equating Jews with Israel. They are not one and the same.

So tell me, when does oppression end and for whom?

When we all agree to respect the autonomy of the individual and reorganize society into horizontal, non-hierarchical, and non-oppressive structures.

Has there ever been a time when oppression was nonexistent?

I don't know. There are times when oppressing others was harder, though, when societies came together by commitment to these non-authoritarian principles, as in utopian communities in America and Britain, or Makhno's Ukraine, the Shinmin Autonomous Region in Korea, etc.

Where is your Utopia other than in your imagination?

It's everywhere that people decide to converge in societies of non-hierarchical, non-authoritarian, egalitarian societies.

You see oppression is just a byproduct of our fallen nature.

*chortle* I can just see that as a defense at the International Criminal Court: the magic fruit made me do it!

You have three options for fighting such oppression. You can ignore it, fight it peacefully, or fight it with physical violence. I assume you prefer the later?

Actually, I prefer a mix of two and three. In some cases, establishing a free clinic or a Food Not Bombs may be as powerful as a Molotov cocktail. However, I do not irrationally commit myself to pacifism alone, thereby giving the state and large corporations a monopoly on violence, and tipping the balance of power so far in favor of the state that it's only possible to approach the state as a supplicant, on bended knee and with hat in hand.

So be it, and let me know where it gets you much like your Palestinian counterparts. Send your children out to blow themselves up in the streets to fight for your cause and then get back to me and tell me how much progress has been made.

If you really think that fighting fire with fire works, why is it that blacks seem to be better off today than they were 50 years ago compared to Palestinians who seem to be worse off than they were 50 years ago?

The presence of the Israeli state. However, as I said before, the mere persistence of Palestinians shows the efficacy of violent resistance. The Israelis have no use for the Palestinians, but they have a lot of use for their land, the same dynamic that played itself out in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Africa, etc. The only reason that the Palestinians haven't joined a whole host of vanished indigenous peoples is because they resist Israeli incursions into their land with force.

Whereas, while Palestinians' lives are small and a matter of indifference to the Israelis, and blacks' lives are a matter of indifference to whites (see: natural disasters, subheading "Hurricanes Katrina and Rita" ), there are tens of millions of black people, and they're very much integrated into the United States and couldn't be gotten rid of as the Israelis tried to do to the Palestinians in the Deir Yassin Massacre without a genocide of unimaginable proportions. Therefore, it suits the state to make a deal: a few throwaway concessions which don't change the racist dynamic of society, and meanwhile these 'successes' dissipate black energy and anger until the civil rights movement as a whole is a dead letter.