There is so much more to be learned and shared about these powerful, trailblazing women. Their contributions to the civil rights movement have for the most part gone unnoticed.
Sometimes decisions are made that have a pivotal effect on the direction of a movement and changes the course of history. These decisions should be debated but they should not be criticized. Unless we were there at the time we have no insight into how things really were and what was necessary at that time to start a movement.
Rosa Parks was not the first person to sit in the white section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was not the second person either. Rosa Parks was the sixth person and was chosen to represent the movement because she "fit the mode". The NAACP wanted to put a face to the Montgomery bus boycott that people could identify with. This article is not meant to demean or devalue the efforts of Rosa Parks or the decision to use her as the face of the boycott. This article is to acknowledge and celebrate the women who paved the way for the boycott to happen. In January I posted my credo. One of the lines states: "I will challenge everything, question everything, and validate everything." Every so often something gets posted about someone that's not true and it goes viral unchecked. During the past election cycle there were posts flying through the internet stating that Mitt Romney said he "can relate to black people" because his ancestors once owned slaves. According to Snopes.com this statement was from a spoof article published by a satirical web site. The latest is the re-posting of a message attributed to Bill Cosby. This one seems to pop up every so often. My guess is since Bill Cosby is a well known and respected public figure someone thought that attributing these comments to him would lend some credibility to their right-wing agenda. Below is an excerpt from the post:
In an article from the New York Times Opinion Pages entitled "The Persistence of Racial Resentment". The writer explores the position that racial attitudes have changed under President Obama. He discusses the statistical contradiction that Obama performed better among white voters in 2008 and 2012 than the two previous white Democratic nominees yet the percentage of people holding anti-black attitudes have also increased. The article references the studies of political scientists Michael Tesler of Brown University and David O. Sears of UCLA. In their 2010 paper, “President Obama and the Growing Polarization of Partisan Attachments by Racial Attitudes and Race,” Tesler and Sears argue that "...Our evidence indicates that Obama activated older and more blatant forms of racial prejudice like old fashioned racism and anti-black affect even more powerfully. While both of these outdated attitudes were unrelated to party identification in the years and decades preceding the 2008 election, we show that they have become significantly linked to white partisanship in the age of Obama. Finally, we show that Obama substantially increased the black-white racial divide in both macro partisanship and in strength of Democratic identification." There is an undercurrent of discontent coming from the African American community regarding President Obama's commitment and policies towards addressing the concerns of African Americans. During an interview on Meet the Press NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous commented “The country’s back to pretty much where it was when this president started.....White people in this country are doing a bit better. Black people are doing a full point worse." In a blog post from the Shreveport Times the writer states: "Mr. Obama’s disparate treatment of the African American voting bloc, to be frank, disgusts me. To hear him take the positions he’s had on issues important to the gay and Latino communities, yet in the same breath, all but chastises African Americans for wanting their issues prioritized, as well, irks me to no end." There are also those that have issues with Obama's policies on drone attacks and the military actions in Africa.
We have to ask, why the sudden push for criminal justice reform? Is there a new concern for those being incarcerated? Please forgive the cynicism but I think not. Maybe it's because prison business is no longer profitable. Imagine that a group entrepreneurs got together to come up with the next “big” business idea. Imagine the conversation goes as follows: Entrepreneur # 1: “We need to build something that’s going to last and has a constant supply of free resources. We don’t want to have to buy raw materials.” Entrepreneur # 2: “Everyone is concerned about crime. Maybe we should do something along those lines.” Entrepreneur # 3: “Why don’t we get into the prison business? We can build prisons, offer our services to states, and run them. We can tell them that we can operate a prison more effectively and efficiently than they ever could which will ultimately save them money.” |
EditorErnest R. Heyward is the Founder and President of the Marketplace for Social Awareness and Social Responsibility Inc. Categories
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