Happy Black History Month Everybody!

[Oexmelin]

Except I think that's wonderful advice for people of any colour in dealing with misbehaving authority figures.  Don't argue with the man holding a gun.  There are ways to seek your redress later on.

Except that arguing with an officer - which is something I would suggest can happen, out of the sheer sense of injustice, when you know you are innocent of any wrongdoing -  when you are white can send you to jail. Arguing with an officer when you are black can send you to the morgue.

[garbon]

It isn't radical in the context of things people are saying at large, but in the context of Beyonce who has mostly spent her musical time waxing lyrically about trying to get on a man or break up with a man, it is quite a shift. After all it is a message that has a power to alienate some.

I read an article way back about some marginal figure named Martin Luther King Jr. who somewhat qualifies your otherwise excellent observation.

You are absolutely right. Eloquent speech can get you some places but it doesn't always and it doesn't always get you were you need to be. America's most recent spate of paying attention to the plight of black people didn't stem from such.

I would also suggest that the Civil Rights era saw a lot of what was considered impolite and disruptive behavior. The mountains didn't move solely because of some speeches.

[Oexmelin]

I read an article way back about some marginal figure named Martin Luther King Jr. who somewhat qualifies your otherwise excellent observation.

Only because King was not operating in a vaccum. There were other figures who made King a more palatable interlocutory.

[Admiral Yi]

You are absolutely right. Eloquent speech can get you some places but it doesn't always and it doesn't always get you were you need to be. America's most recent spate of paying attention to the plight of black people didn't stem from such.

America's most recent spate of paying attention to the plight of black people stems from the invention of the camera phone, not from bangers burning down nail salons in Ferguson and looting CVS's in Baltimore.

[garbon]

You are absolutely right. Eloquent speech can get you some places but it doesn't always and it doesn't always get you were you need to be. America's most recent spate of paying attention to the plight of black people didn't stem from such.

America's most recent spate of paying attention to the plight of black people stems from the invention of the camera phone, not from bangers burning down nail salons in Ferguson and looting CVS's in Baltimore.

If you think that is what I was talking about, you clearly don't know much about me. I was not advocating a Malcolm X-type approach.

[Admiral Yi]

Only because King was not operating in a vaccum. There were other figures who made King a more palatable interlocutory.

I'm not sure the point you're trying to make.  The way i see it MLK wasn't negotiating with negotiating with the power structure in Washington (if he was, what was he offering in return?).  Rather, he was presenting the reality of injustice in the South to the American people, to move public opinion.

[Razgovory]

We have tapes of him working with LBJ, so he was doing some negotiating.

[Oexmelin]

I'm not sure the point you're trying to make.  The way i see it MLK wasn't negotiating with negotiating with the power structure in Washington (if he was, what was he offering in return?). 

Of course he was. A very clear example is the march on Washington. What he was offering was whatever influence he had, over a movement capable of mobilizing thousands.

[Valmy]

Except I think that's wonderful advice for people of any colour in dealing with misbehaving authority figures.  Don't argue with the man holding a gun.  There are ways to seek your redress later on.

Except that arguing with an officer - which is something I would suggest can happen, out of the sheer sense of injustice, when you know you are innocent of any wrongdoing -  when you are white can send you to jail. Arguing with an officer when you are black can send you to the morgue.

Well it can send you to the Morgue when you are white or latino or whatever as well. Just at a lower rate. Also in a country where having a conviction can have you rejected a job, housing, voting rights, and so forth being sent to jail is all but a death sentence in my book. Now granted just putting you in jail for a bit is not a conviction but let us just say it would reflect badly on me.

The cops have a horrifyingly large amount of power to fuck you up if they want to. Anybody who does anything but bow your head and say 'yes officer' is a braver person than me.

[CountDeMoney]

I was curious, because want to know what filtered out in the general public in the US about the Haitian Revolution.  I teach a class on the French and Haitian Revolutions and was debating separating them into two different courses, and was wondering about the draw of the HR for students.

It's a shame the HR gets short shrift now in anything other than dedicated Haitian or Latin American Studies, considering how its palpable presence in the antebellum era was the single greatest conceptual nightmare of the plantation culture of the South.


I say separate them, and roll the Haitian Revolution in with the other great Maroon insurrection and independence movements of Jamaica and Surinam, and even the Seminole Wars, their influence on Vesey, Turner, Prosser and John Brown, etc. 

Slave revolts?  Unconventional warfare?  Men of color achieving autonomy, if not outright independence, through force of arms?  That's a semester's worth of scaring the living shit out of creepy ass crackers right there. 

[Eddie Teach]

That's a semester's worth of scaring the living shit out of creepy ass crackers right there.

Why are they taking the course?

[CountDeMoney]

That's a semester's worth of scaring the living shit out of creepy ass crackers right there.

Why are they taking the course?

Gen Ed requirement.

[Valmy]

I read an article way back about some marginal figure named Martin Luther King Jr. who somewhat qualifies your otherwise excellent observation.

Only because King was not operating in a vaccum. There were other figures who made King a more palatable interlocutory.

So palatable he was assassinated.

[derspiess]

Slave revolts?  Unconventional warfare?  Men of color achieving autonomy, if not outright independence, through force of arms?  That's a semester's worth of scaring the living shit out of creepy ass crackers right there. 

You're weird.

[LaCroix]

Except that arguing with an officer - which is something I would suggest can happen, out of the sheer sense of injustice, when you know you are innocent of any wrongdoing -  when you are white can send you to jail. Arguing with an officer when you are black can send you to the morgue.

doubt it has much to do with black and white, more poor and not-poor. you get a black guy who talks/acts/dresses white (not-poor), and the chances he's killed lower drastically. get a white guy who talks/acts/dresses black (poor), and the chances he's killed... etc.

at least usually