Asymmetrical Information

When other blacks did the same thing Rosa Parks did they weren't "backed all the way". In "Lies My Teacher Told Me" (IIRC) the author mentions that another black woman did exactly the same thing Rosa Parks did a few weeks/months earlier. She certainly didn't get the same level of support Rosa Parks did. Why not? Because she was a young, unwed mother and the local groups decided she didn't make a very good test case.

What Rosa Parks did required courage, certainly. But she is just a symbol. The hagiographies surrounding her do a disservice to the hundreds or thousands of blacks who were arrested before her but without the benefit of working for the local NAACP and knowing they had the full backing of local organizers. She is a perfect example of the "The Great Man" style of history. Even when we're talking about minority women we apparently can't escape it. I guess we *need* one name, one moment, one turning point because we desperately need to read history as a novel, a story, with heroes, and climaxes, and swelling symphonic music denoting where we must laugh and where we must cry.

You apparently have a misguided understanding of how history works. Yes, you absolutly need a catalyst at the right time in order to make advancemnets in society. Lets not forget that there was a significant civil rights probelem for African Americans in the SOuth since, oh, I dunno, late 1600's. 1865 certainly did'nt fix all of those issues, though it solved the biggest one. So why did so many African Americans have to endure what they did for so long, and why were so many "ignored" when they tried to stand up against this bigotry? Because history is not a scripted novel: it's a complicated interplay of trends, events, feelings, all set off by a catalyst of some sort. Yes, the Civil Rights movement needed the "Great Man" (or this case woman) or two. Thats how it works. Nobody pays attention to the anonymous person.

In "Lies My Teacher Told Me" (IIRC) the author mentions that another black woman did exactly the same thing Rosa Parks did a few weeks/months earlier.

I'm not interested in arguing either side of this. But for that reason, I think I'm being objective when I say that the practice of treating questions like this in terms of "lies" and "liars" is destructive to both honest disagreement and general civility.

Justus pretty much summed it up.

It isn't that Rosa Parks didn't have guts; she certainly did. It is that she gets held up as a kind of paragon, when her kind of bravery was actually pretty common among Southern blacks by that time. The official history makes it sound like black people were meekly doing what they were told until Rosa came along.

Dan,

>>>"It isn't that Rosa Parks didn't have guts; she certainly did. It is that she gets held up as a kind of paragon, when her kind of bravery was actually pretty common among Southern blacks by that time. The official history makes it sound like black people were meekly doing what they were told until Rosa came along."

Well, look at America Dan. It was a CRIME to do what Rosa Parks did. I think people are losing perspective on this.
Was she an excellent choice as a symbol of a pandemic discriminatory process? Absolutely. Here was a presentable, articulate woman doing something that most Americans wouldn't think twice about--sitting on seat of a public mass transit vehicle. Except by LAW, she was required to give up that seat because of the color of her skin.
But that's the story of America, Dan, in regards to race. You do acknowlege that "courage" comes from the fact that Parks not only faced ARREST for doing what she did, but possible beatings and WORSE from the local white police force with no reprecussions whatsoever. That is documented history. But you wouldn't know it from some of the other posters to this blog, Dan. I give you credit that you at least understand what was at work here.

Perhaps that is why I'm dogmatic in posting to this and other weblogs. There is certainly more than one side, or version than the ones often presented.

In this thread, I side with Megan. This doesn't happen that often, but when she's right, I'll be the first one applauding.

--Cobra

Well color me flabbergasted!

On this thread, I side with Cobra. I don't think this has ever happened before. I suppose I could quibble about the phrasing "that's the story of America" with its contracted-but-still-there present tense, but at such a grand moment as this why let a few details spoil things!!!

I think what Rosa Parks did took courage and I tip my hat to her on the occasion of her passing for standing up for what was right. Even if you think she was not that big a deal, this is the wrong time to argue about it. She did something courageous, she's passed on, it's only right that there be some commemoration of that and remembrance of the wrongs she was fighting.

Where it starts to get a little cloying is when the remembrance of these (now) long-ago wrongs is harped upon yet again as though there was some sort of resonance with the current state of African-American civil rights. IMHO there isn't...there are no systematic infringements of black civil rights anymore in this country. Whatever wrongs are occasionally committed by a rogue police officer here or there are vastly overshadowed by the wrongs being committed on a large scale by the black community against their own and against other Americans. For instance, compare the 5,000 or so lynchings of blacks that occurred in all of American history to the approximately 700,000 violent crimes committed by blacks against whites in this country every year (according to the Justice Department).

So yes, let's give Ms. Parks her due for her courage in standing up to a true wrong against her people. But let's not pretend that the situation today is anything remotely like the situation then.

The world is full of heroes. Like the person who baked and mailed out ($30 each!) countless poundcakes to benefactors across the land.

I'll side with Dan on this.

I think we can probably all agree that what she did was courageous and that she should be celebrated for it. Obviously, she is historically important since her action helped to galvanise change.

I hope we can probably all agree that what she did was not unique. The fact that she worked for the local NAACP certainly had a role in her elevation as an icon.

However, I don't think you put her on the same kind of pedestal as Martin Luther King, Mandela, Marcus Garvey who all actively went out to change things for OTHERS at great personal danger.

Let's not forget that her main motivation for her act was that she was tired, and sick of being ordered around.

Can we not celebrate and admire people without having to make them into saints?

[Off-topic]

The world is full of heroes. Like the person who baked and mailed out ($30 each!) countless poundcakes to benefactors across the land.

Jane, did you get my e-mail with the Red Cross receipt? No reply to my e-mail (sent from my real name). I could have fallen into a spam tram.

I asked in another thread a ways back.

[On-topic]

If you don't think so, why don't you go to some totalitarian country that violently represses dissent by its citizens--which is what the pre-civil rights South was, for all intents and purposes, as far as blacks were concerned--and take a public stand against the government.

I was listening to WWJ (Detroit) this morning and heard a recounting of Nelson Mandela coming to Detroit. He got off the plane and there were many dignitaries to greet him, including the mayor of Detroit, the governor of Michigan, and the president of the UAW. Nelson spotted Rosa, walked past the brass, and came up to her, took her hand and said "Rosa Parks! Rosa Parks! Rosa Parks!"

Apparently, her actions had impressed him greatly.

Well, look at America Dan. It was a CRIME to do what Rosa Parks did.

The point is, she wasn't the first or (I believe) the last black person to be arrested for violating that law. She did a brave thing, but so did many other people who history ignores and/or outright downplays. In many ways, those other people are even more worthy of admiration, since they acted without a legal staff ready to take up their case.

Rosa Parks was an important symbol, but it is important to remember that she symbolizes hundreds of thousands, even millions, of other black men and women (and white men and women, for that matter) who openly defied the race laws. It is those people, more than the celebrated heroes of the movement, who really brought about the changes of the 50s and 60s.

A final quibble: it wasn't a crime "in America", it was a crime in most of the southern states. It was legal in most of the country.

Seems like there's a lot of parallels with Jackie Robinson.

Cobra -

You come acrossed as slightly confused when you say:
... That is documented history. But you wouldn't know it from some of the other posters to this blog, Dan. I give you credit that you at least understand what was at work here.

I think it's pretty well-known that it sucked to be black in the South before the Civil Rights Movement, but even if it weren't, everyone participating in this thread has just read Jane's explicit comparison to a violently repressive totalitarian state. Isn't it possible no one is talking about this because we all agree with her?

Cobra -

Ohmygod.

Never mind.

In the future, I'm going to read this blog in chronological rather than on-the-page order.

Dan writes:

>>>"A final quibble: it wasn't a crime "in America", it was a crime in most of the southern states. It was legal in most of the country."

I'm not going to choose this hill to fight with you on, because there's a rare consensus (somewhat) on this board (with the exception of MarkJ). I will just say that the Southern states were still part of America, therefore the statement is accurate.

Gazzer writes:

>>>"However, I don't think you put her on the same kind of pedestal as Martin Luther King, Mandela, Marcus Garvey who all actively went out to change things for OTHERS at great personal danger."

If you were black, and lived in the South before the 1970's, and you openly defied or challenged "white authority", you were putting yourself at "great personal danger." My late father grew up in Albany, GA and served in the segregated Armed Forces during WWII along with all my uncles. He told us point blank that those "rules" were VIGOROUSLY enforced, and not always just by police.

MarkJ writes:

>>>"For instance, compare the 5,000 or so lynchings of blacks that occurred in all of American history to the approximately 700,000 violent crimes committed by blacks against whites in this country every year (according to the Justice Department)."

First of all, most violent crime in America is INTRARACIAL. (FBI Statistics) Second, where on earth do you get a figure of 5000 lynchings since the 17th Century, when blacks were first brought to this continent? Why are you not including the crime of SLAVERY, which included the attrocities of kidnapping, imprisonment, torture, mass rape, forced labor, unspeakable acts of cruelty and even murder for two and half centuries?
Oh...I get it...since the people in power (white men) decided amongst themselves that slavery was legal in America, and blacks had no rights, then I guess that's why you didn't include those figures that included MILLIONS of people.

Silly me.

But don't let this oversight on my part spoil an otherwise constructive thread, where I can see common ground on the horizon between myself and my conservative brothers and sisters.

--Cobra

I will just say that the Southern states were still part of America, therefore the statement is accurate.

It is accurate in the sense that the statement "gay marriage is legally recognized in America" is accurate. Massachusetts is, after all, part of America. The statement is still misleading, since "X is illegal in Y", in English, generally means "X is illegal in all of Y", not "X is illegal in some parts of Y and entirely legal in most of Y".

since the people in power (white men) decided amongst themselves that slavery was legal in America, and blacks had no rights

I'd be careful about assigning race-based blame for slavery, since the practice of enslaving black people was invented by blacks and Arabs centuries before Europeans started buying -- and, for that matter, was continued by blacks and Arabs long after Europe and the Americas had concluded the practice was fundamentally evil. Furthermore, it was those nasty "white men" who invented the idea that slavery is morally wrong, and it was the "white" nations and their colonies who were first to ban slavery.

Many evil people took part in the slave trade, but their skin color had nothing to do with it. Slaves may have been exclusively black, but *slavers* were a goddamned Rainbow Coalition of assholery.

Dan, in fact, the enslavement of Africans by Africans and Arabs continues to this day.

Also, if you want a shocking read, you should check out White Gold by Giles Milton which discusses the long history of European enslavement by Arabs. Ever wonder where the "slavs" of Eastern Europe got there name? There's also interesting stuff about slave raids as far north as Ireland. Of course, this book only discusses the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries. It goes much further back, especially in Eastern Europe.

Of course she was for real. She was a real human being wasn't she? She was a real black woman wasn't she? She was really put in jail for merely sitting on a bus wasn't she?

Personally, I like her better because she planned it and was part of a large civil rights organization. I would hate to think that people should gain or fight for their civil rights merely by accident or happenstance.

I can understand why they kept the organization and planning secret at the time. A woman on her own just trying to live her life plays a little better to a public barely coming to grips with the idea of racial equality. But we don't live in 1956 and we don't have to have our borderline racist sympathies coddled today. Or, at least I hope we don't.

Cobra,
My post was not explicitly clear to you? I thought I bent over backwards to first praise her courage etc.
I did not say that she didn't put herself at great personal danger. You took one part of my sentence and answered that out of context. I hope that this was a lack of reading comprehension on your part and not just rhetorical trickery.

The point I was making was that she did not do this on behalf of OTHERS. I used block capitals last time in order to try to make this point.
Some examples:
MLK, Malcom X, the French resistance, Schindler (from WW2), Jesus, all made great personal sacrifices on behalf of PEOPLE OTHER THAN THEMSELVES. For that, I would argue that they go several notches higher on the virtue scale.

And if it came down to it, I would put leaders higher up the bravery scale since they make more likely targets for assassination, etc.

Dan,

I can understand your want to absolve Americans from that time period for their part in slavery, but America's bout with slavery was unparalleled in modern history. Look at other African and Arab cultures that had slavery, who while putting up with an evil institution most definetely, did allow their slaves rights under the law, opportunities to become part of the community after service and an overall indentured servant type nature. As opposed to America's version of slavery which cast slaves as less than HUMAN, supplied them with zero rights under the law and subjected them to horrific torture and oppression that has no parallel in modern times and lasted long past other countries had ended the practice. Skin color had a lot to do with slavery in this country, if not others, for even after African-Americans were freed they still had to deal with type of oppression that Rosa Parks and other members of the Civil Rights movement fought against.

Interesting. I knew about the 'very slightly alternative' Rosa Parks story, but deliberately didn't mention it to my teenaged sons when we watched the standard TV obits last night. Partly because they hear quite enough yappy cynicism from me on other topics. But partly, I admit, because I approved of this particular unambiguously shaded version of a civil rights saint.

I think the word "planned" is too extreme. There was this woman, involved in the NAACP for years, and sporadic cases of blacks in various parts of the south quite rightly rebelling against a heinous law and a social regime.

I think it was more of a lucky combination. When she was told to vacate the seat, I'm fairly sure some part of her was thinking: "At last, the perfect opportunity!" This makes me respect her far more than the plain woman worried about her acheing feet.
She was also an upstanding citizen and conveniently had no skeletons in her closest (unlike some of the others who had rebelled) and knew how to behave to make the southern white authorities and their whole rotten system look as despicable as possible (at least outside of the south), which made it a great case for the NAACP to get behind. It was kind of a perfect storm. For those of short memory, white southern police authority in those days was no respector of women or age (young or old) when it came to dealing with blacks and maintaining white privilege. She was putting herself directly in the path of great potential physical harm.
In the final analysis though, she seized the moment and ended up changing her country for the better. How many of us would be able to do the same?

Another interesting aspect of the story was the role played by the Pullman Porters in supporting and bankrolling the early civil rights movement.

Even if she wasn't unique, setting herself up as a test case is a big sacrifice in itself. She opened up her entire life up to scrutiny by people who had good reason to smash her image. Moving forward, every word she said would reflect on the entire cause and potentially ruin the work of thousands of others. She accepted this responsibility willingly and gave up control of her life for the greater good.

Cindy Sheahan illustrates how important it is to be ever vigilant with your mouth and of sterling character and intellect if you're going to put yourself forward as a leader.

If Rosa Parks had done anything inappropriate with her life in the last 50 years, no matter how irrelevant, you can bet we all would have heard about it. She's a hero for agreeing to give her life to America in the name of this cause.

COBRA wrote:

"Second, where on earth do you get a figure of 5000 lynchings since the 17th Century, when blacks were first brought to this continent?"

I did a quick Google and found this on the "Factbites" website:

"During the heyday of lynching, between 1889 and 1918, 3,224 individuals were lynched, of whom 2,522 or 78 percent were Black."

"Although lynchings declined somewhat in the twentieth century, there were still 97 in 1908 (89 fl, 8 white), 83 in the racially troubled postwar year of 1919 (76, 7, plus some 25 race riots), 30 in 1926 (23, 7), and 28 in 1933 (24, 4). "

http://www.factbites.com/topics/Lynching

I was incorrect in saying that the 5,000 figure was the total in all of American history - it's the total since the Civil War/Jim Crow era.

My point was to put lynchings in perspective. Consider that hundreds of thousands of whites are victims of black violence EVERY YEAR currently. Even if the 5,000 figure for 1889-1968 for lynchings of blacks is off by an order of magnitude, it is still dwarfed by the magnitude of black-on-white violence committed each year today.

This doesn't at all diminish the wrong that was done by enslaving black people, or by oppressing and intimidating them after slavery ended. That was very wrong. That was also a long time ago.

In the real world of today, there is no oppression of blacks by whites. So it strikes me as a little hollow and irrelevant to continually harp on the oppression of ancestors of today's blacks by ancestors of today's whites, when the real-world problem today is, if anything, just the opposite.

Still, it was ungracious of me to bring this up during the commemoration of Ms. Parks. She was battling a true wrong and deserves credit for it. I should have held my tongue and argued this issue another day.

The significance of Rosa Parks was the introduction of Marin Luther King to the world stage. No other spokesman for Blacks before, or since, could rally Blacks nationally for a common cause: Civil rights.

Rosa Parks took advantage of her new found notoriety and praise by continuing to fight for civil rights throughout her life, indicating Rosa Parks was "for real."

MarkJ writes:

>>>"In the real world of today, there is no oppression of blacks by whites."

You know what? I'm going to leave that line alone, although I vehemently disagree with it. The reason why I'm going to leave it alone is because of your impressive line here:

>>>"Still, it was ungracious of me to bring this up during the commemoration of Ms. Parks. She was battling a true wrong and deserves credit for it. I should have held my tongue and argued this issue another day."

Mark, it wouldn't be productive of me to fire back with statistics and rhetoric about a parallel topic that isn't the focus of this thread. It would only serve to antagonize and obstruct the potential for greater understanding.

The power of the blogosphere I believe, is the ability for individuals to engage in conversations they would or could NEVER have in the 3D world. Making enemies out of those who disagree with us is a waste of the potential for learning available to us all.

--Cobra

I don't deny that doing what Parks did required courage and that recognizing her is appropriate - even if she was selected and persuaded to take on the role. But it does bother me that the press persists in presenting this as a spontaneous act of an individual who, one day just happened to decide she wasn't going to take it any more, rather than a planned demonstration. That *is* a lie, and a wholly unnecessary one.

And in a way, by presenting her as woman who, one day, just decided not to take it anymore with no idea of where her act might lead, the myth discounts the bravery of Parks. In fact, in agreeing to be the test case, she KNEW, that she was likely to become a highly polarizing public symbol and decided to do it anyway.

And what of the brave woman, Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old pregnant teenager who DID refuse to give up her seat spontaneously and was arrested and convicted:

http://inquirer.stanford.edu/Fall2004/vdlt/Unsung.html

Shouldn't she be rescued from obscurity and celebrated? Or is nobody really interested because that might interfere with the 'official version' of the Rosa Parks story?

It just seems to me that the true version is not only better because it is true, but also because it is more subtle and interesting.

Slocum writes:

>>>"And what of the brave woman, Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old pregnant teenager who DID refuse to give up her seat spontaneously and was arrested and convicted:

http://inquirer.stanford.edu/Fall2004/vdlt/Unsung.html

Shouldn't she be rescued from obscurity and celebrated?"

I think you're forgetting where you are if you're suggesting that an unwed, pregnant black teenager be celebrated here for ANYTHING.

If you don't believe me, go to:

http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/cat_wealth_and_inequality.html

and peruse through the blog threads. Tell me how "celebrated" unwed pregnant black teenagers are and get back to me on the Claudette Colvin story.

--Cobra

Cobra, well put.

It is unfair to compare the number of black lynchings to the number of whites who experience violence at the hands of blacks. "Violence" includes robbery, assault, etc. The vast majority of violent incidents do not result in someone's death, but 100% of lynchings do. I have no idea exactly how many whites are killed by blacks each year, but I know it is not 100,000.

Even comparing "killings" to lynchings does not seem quite fair because a lynching is a hate crime, whereas a killing could just happen because a black man was driving drunk, or shot someone during a robbery, or maybe there was a gang feud, etc. I would argue that the effect of a hate crime (we often categorize this as "terrorism" now) is far more psychologically damaging.

I can understand your want to absolve Americans from that time period for their part in slavery

Perhaps you lack reading comprehension skills. I quite explicitly did not absolve American slavers and slaveholders from their part in slavery. What I did was criticize the attempt to blame their actions on their skin color, and the attempt to pretend that slavery was a "white on black" problem rather than a "people are bastards" problem.

but America's bout with slavery was unparalleled in modern history

America's bout with slavery didn't take place during modern history -- it ended 140 years ago. Nor was it "unparalleled" during the period in which it occurred, blacks were enslaved in the same manner, and subjected to the same inhumane treatment, throughout the Americas and various European colonies.

Look at other African and Arab cultures that had slavery, who while putting up with an evil institution most definetely, did allow their slaves rights under the law, opportunities to become part of the community after service and an overall indentured servant type nature.

A politically correct myth. You are right that some Arab societies allowed slaves rights, but African tribes did not; that notion is entirely fictional. And, of course, even if your claims were true, you claim that American slavery was unparalleled would remain false -- the "no rights, no humanity" treatment of slaves was practiced by Europeans and Hispanics too.

My point was to put lynchings in perspective. Consider that hundreds of thousands of whites are victims of black violence EVERY YEAR currently

Isn't the relevant question how many of those hundreds of thousands of crimes are committed *because* the victim is white? Presumably the overwhelming majority of them aren't. Indeed, statistically speaking white people are underrepresented as victims of black crime; as Cobra noted earlier (he was bound to be right about something eventually), most crime is intraracial.

my 2 cents

Rosa Parks deserves respect. What she did took courage.

But some of you jugheads need to study a bit more history...........

The South is not/was not the only place black folks had problems......

Also....New York.....yes, New York was one of the
states with the largest slave population at the time of the Civil War.

Also........history buffs, during the War....Lincoln only freed the slaves in the Confederacy...........not those in the Northern States.......

Truth is often stranger than fiction and much more interesting......'course it does rip some folks' surface knowledge.

I first hit the South in my early twenties, and stayed predominantly in the South for the next 18 years before hitting Long Island. Metro New York is more racially intolerant and segregated and bigoted than any place I ever saw in the South. The South had to confront their race problems in the '70's, and did so in an exemplary fashion. The North has yet to do so.

Like many others, I wish Cobra could see something positive about the last fifty years and be a bit more objective about self destructive behaviors among poverty level African Americans, among other things. Nonetheless, I agree that comparing lynching with modern crime, even modern, racially-motivated crime, is way off base. First, lynching was a regional/national phenomenon that, unlike modern, one-on-one random crime, was tolerated at least implicitly by law enforcement. Second, it was beyond mere 'gang'-type activity--it was a communal crime. Third, it was a recognized, quasi-institutional form of "justice" with a distinctly and intentionally racial component. Fourth, it was intended to terrorize and intimidate an identifiable population. None of these qualities attach to modern interracial crime.

Put differently, lynching was a repeated, systematic effort by a portion of the white community to terrorize and intimidate blacks. It could only have persisted as long as it did with the willing acquiescence of the authorities and the community at large.

Dan wrote:
"Indeed, statistically speaking white people are underrepresented as victims of black crime"

Here are the facts:

• Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent.

• Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black.

• Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.

• Blacks are 2.25 times more likely to commit officially-designated hate crimes against whites than vice versa.

Source: "The Color of Crime: Race, Crime, and Justice in America" Second, Expanded Edition, 2005. All statistics gleaned from Justice Department crime statistics.

The days of organized white atrocities against blacks such as lynchings are long gone. The last lynching was in 1968. It just doesn't happen anymore and hasn't in any significant numbers at all for 70 years. This whole topic involves interracial violence, of which lynching is one serious manifestation. The reality of interracial violence today is that it is overwhelmingly a black-against-white phenomenon.

lara wrote:
"Even comparing "killings" to lynchings does not seem quite fair because a lynching is a hate crime, whereas a killing could just happen because a black man was driving drunk, or shot someone during a robbery, or maybe there was a gang feud, etc. I would argue that the effect of a hate crime (we often categorize this as "terrorism" now) is far more psychologically damaging."

A killing is a killing. Whether at the hands of a mob or a single assailant, the victim is just as dead. And driving drunk and accidentally killing someone is not a violent crime for the purposes of these statistics. And regarding your hate crime comment, note that blacks are 2.25 times as likely as whites to commit them.

mckinneytexas: lynching has not been an issue for a very long time. Black on white violent crime is a very significant issue now.

It was wrong for whites to administer vigilante justice like that. Whites became convinced it was wrong and stopped doing it.

Meanwhile, blacks riot regularly and in roving gangs of thugs murder innocent whites like Kip Kines in Seattle a few years ago. Just a week or two ago there were roving bands of thug blacks committing vigilante "justice" in Toledo, destroying white property and beating up whites. Read back over your four-point definition of lynching and see how closely it fits the definition of black urban rioting that occurs with regularity nowadays.

MarkJ,

Now there you go. I restrain from carpet-bombing facts on your fallacious "blacks are no longer oppressed by whites" line in the spirit of comity, and what do you go and do? You continue down the road of turning a thread about Rosa Parks into an attack on African Americans and crime.

I hope that REASONABLE conservatives see this for what it is, and understand WHY many African-Americans like me have hair-trigger responses in regards to racial issues.

It's only a matter of time before genetics are discussed on thread.

--Cobra

MarkJ, you really need to look up the definition of "inappropriate" in a dictionary.

There is a time and place to discuss your figures, a thread about Rosa Parks is not that place unless your aim is to discredit everything she symbolizes.

Cobra,

I think you're displaying admirable restraint.

MarkJ:

I simply don't agree that organized or unorganized crime by blacks matches any of my criteria. I neither agree nor disagree with your statistics. I am far from a politically correct apologist for any number of social pathologies that are overrepresented in the Black community, but I question 'advocacy statistics' regardless of who employs them. Finally, I agree with M. Farris--this is not the thread to discuss today's crime statistics when the subject is someone who put herself in the line of fire at a time when it was government policy to prosecute, at a minimum, Black people who didn't give way socially to white people. Its a dark stain on our history that otherwise good people tolerated and even condoned this regime. All the statistics in the world won't change the fact that brave men and women put their lives, health and liberty on the line to secure what should be every American's birthright: equality before the law. That they were forced to do so on American soil against duly constituted authorities rather than on a foreign battle field liberating an oppressed people is more than just a dark stain on our history--it is in direct opposition to the nobility of purpose we have always, and usually with fair justification, ascribed to ourselves as a freedom loving nation. Rosa Parks is a symbol of and a testament to the difference a single person can make. That many others made a similar protest in no way diminishes what she did. If anything, that she was one of many underscores both the evil she opposed and the supremacy of the human spirit.

Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent

87% of the country is non-black and 17% of the country is non-white. You would expect black criminals to commit interracial crimes far more often than white people do, because almost all of the potential victims in America are white.

Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic

Which proves that I was correct in saying that whites are underrepresented as victims of black crime. Whites are 82% of the population; blacks, 13%. Whites *should* represent be 82% of the victims of black crime. In reality, we only represent 45% of the victims -- less than half what you would expect if black crime was randomly distributed, and FAR less than what you would expect if black criminals were targeting whites.

Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa

I'd like to see some statistics backing up that claim. For example, according to the FBI (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/documents/CIUS_2004_Section2.pdf), whites accounted for 15.6% of black murderer's victims while blacks accounted for 6.7% of white murderer's victims. This indicates two things: first, that blacks murder whites at around two and a half (not 39) times the rate at which whites murder blacks, and two, that white people are underrepresented among victims of black murderers.

Oh, and Amazon doesn't carry your book. The only place I found it, googling around, was Jared Taylor's website -- and since he's a white separatist who pals around with Klan members, I'd be careful taking the book at face value.

It is apparent that most of this is just idle chatter.+

All who can remember that December day that Rosa Parks sat down know that she didn't sit down because her "feets were tired"; Rosa Parks sat down because she was "tired of giving in" to the sick whims of white folk.

She was prepared, she was mad, and she was unafraid. As a result she inspired millions of her sister and brother Africanamericans, and millions of other oppressed people around the world to stand up and join her in her fight; she was a leading wedge of a generation which forced many of the ruling classes and their brutal minions to respect her and her people.

The people who fought with her and the people who prayed for her will never forget her. We recognize her courage, strength and determination. Those who had gone before her prepared the way; but Rosa Parks brought the issue to the forefront with grace and intelligence. Her steely determination and courage came from souls of our ancestors who had found in Rosa Parks the right vessel to illustrate our plight, organize us and so to then slay the giant... and for the first time in the history of this country, the effort to galvanize all Black people as a PEOPLE, worked.

Hell yes, I give her all the credit in the world.
And yes, it is still Nation-time

It is apparent that most of this is just idle chatter.+

All who can remember that December day that Rosa Parks sat down know that she didn't sit down because her "feets were tired"; Rosa Parks sat down because she was "tired of giving in" to the sick whims of white folk.

She was prepared, she was mad, and she was unafraid. As a result she inspired millions of her sister and brother Africanamericans, and millions of other oppressed people around the world to stand up and join her in her fight; she was a leading wedge of a generation which forced many of the ruling classes and their brutal minions to respect her and her people.

The people who fought with her and the people who prayed for her will never forget her. We recognize her courage, strength and determination. Those who had gone before her prepared the way; but Rosa Parks brought the issue to the forefront with grace and intelligence. Her steely determination and courage came from souls of our ancestors who had found in Rosa Parks the right vessel to illustrate our plight, organize us and so to then slay the giant... and for the first time in the history of this country, the effort to galvanize all Black people as a PEOPLE, worked.

Hell yes, I give her all the credit in the world.
And yes, it is still Nation-time

blacks riot regularly

Oh Good Lord. Yes, we've reached the Promised Land.

Alabamian--

But some of you jugheads need to study a bit more history...........

We're not the only ones...

The South is not/was not the only place black folks had problems.....

Right. This is certainly true, and if anyone has been claiming the north is and has always been free of racism, they should be roundly spanked.

Also....New York.....yes, New York was one of the
states with the largest slave population at the time of the Civil War.

Um, hello, no way. Slavery was abolished in New York, and all northern states other than the "border states", long before the Civil War. If you don't believe me, please find a link to the slave population in New York in 1860 and compare it to the population in southern states.

Alabamian,

Try looking up your facts before you suggest to others that they 'need to study a bit more history'

You can start at http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/php/state.php,
where they have US Census reports dating from 1790.

From the 1850 Census (last before the Civil War)

Number of slaves in New York = 0;
Number all non-border northern states = 2526; Number in Confederate states = 3 million.

New York did have 21,193 slaves in the first Census in 1790; ranking it 6th of the 13 states. However at 6% of the population, this was far lower than the Southern states with 25-43%. The absolute number of slaves in New York went down in every census, with only 75 being reported in 1830 and none after that.

Back on topic; yes the Rosa Parks story has been mythologized, and adult history should get the record straight. In particular, we should not forget that there were others equally as brave as Parks whose names are not famous. However, nothing about the true story detracts from my admiration and gratitude to Parks. The fact that she did take a stand was (even if not uniquely so) vastly more difficult than anything I have done. Knowing the consequences of being in the center of a media circus (she had seen what happend to Jackie Robinson) makes her effort even more impressive. We are all better off for her work.

May her memory be a blessing.

Cobra:
"I hope that REASONABLE conservatives see this for what it is, and understand WHY many African-Americans like me have hair-trigger responses in regards to racial issues."

Now I understand Cobra-- He is sitting on the pitypot and thinks America is a terrible place because he thinks he is being discriminated against.

Until he revealed his race I would have never thought he was Black. As a matter-of-fact, I didn't think about his race at all. I don't see why your race should have anything to do with discrimination.

I would discriminate against Cobra, not because he is Black but because he is a Gibbering Idiot.

I am totally with MLKjr. I do not judge a man by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.

Cobra - can you truly say this of yourself having admitted a "hair trigger" response regarding a mans skin color (racial issues)?

thedaddy

When I first learned (not all that long ago, actually, to my discredit) that Rosa Parks was not the simple tired housewife presented in my high school history lessons, I assumed that the subterfuge was deemed necessary because the time was right for nationwide attention, but simultaneous widespread revelation that there was an organization of black Americans capable not only of coordinating a response to a systemic injustice but also of staging a confrontation to set up the response might have been Too Much for a skittish public to accept. An NAACP known to have not only a certain degree of power and influence, but also a long-term strategy, might have threatened some otherwise enlightened white Americans. Or at least the NAACP leadership might reasonably have thought so.

I try not to let ends justify means, but this being the Real World, sometimes it's the best, or only, justification. In such situations, I just hold my breath and hope for leadership of high character, and ends that are disproportionately important and morally defensible with regard to the manipulation of the means employed, as was surely the case in the Rosa Parks story.

Tell me how "celebrated" unwed pregnant black teenagers are and get back to me on the Claudette Colvin story.

Obviously no unwed pregnant teenagers were or are celebrated BECAUSE they are pregnant and unwed, but are you suggesting that having been pregnant at 15 in 1955 would rule out esteem for any woman NOW?!? Black or white? That strikes me as preposterous.

I'm not saying that having Parks rather than Colvin be the test case in Montgomery in 1955 was the wrong decision--not at all. I'm only saying that there is no reason to be distorting history all these years later. Colvin should get credit for the courage of spontaneous defying injustice, Parks should get credit for the courage to knowingly stand up and throw herself into the middle of the fray. The NAACP should get credit for having carefully planned the protest. And we all should get true history rather than mythology.

Slocum writes:

>>>"Obviously no unwed pregnant teenagers were or are celebrated BECAUSE they are pregnant and unwed, but are you suggesting that having been pregnant at 15 in 1955 would rule out esteem for any woman NOW?!? Black or white? That strikes me as preposterous."

Then you would find many thread posts on "Asymetrical Information" regarding poverty, genetics and unwed pregnancies "preposterous", because if you go to the link I provided you'll see PRECISELY that suggestion.

But you don't have to take it from me. Go to that link. Mark J's comments would be considered tame there.

As far as this thread is concerned, I am pleasantly relieved that at least some of the conservatives posters here recognize the value of critical thinking on a topic using reason.

--Cobra
Keep Hope Alive.

Cobra, the value of critical thinking on a topic using reason is a two way street.

Cobra (and others), more people would go to your links if you learned how to post them properly.

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