Civil Rights Movement, Act Two 0
At the Ashland, Oregon, Daily Tidings, Herb Rothschild posits that we are seeing a second Civil Rights Movement. Whereas the first was directed at legally-enforced discrimination (Jim Crow laws, segregated public institutions, red-lining neighborhoods and the like), this one is directed at gaining social equality, that is, equality in deed, not just in word.*
Just as the first Civil Rights Movement engendered opposition, so too has this one, as the Republican Party has become little more than the Party of the New Secesh. An excerpt:
This year is shaping up to be for the second struggle what 1964-1965 was for the first. On one side, Republican officials at every level have been openly combative since a black person was elected president. Now their George Wallace has emerged, and this time they’ve embraced him. Hate speech and hate crimes are increasing. In April the Southern Poverty Law Center published research indicating the Trump campaign is inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in U.S. classrooms nationwide. On the other side, graphic exposure by phone cameras has made routine police violence against people of color no longer tolerable and sparked renewed grassroots activism.Do please read the rest.
Image via Michael-in-Norfolk.
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*The actual extent to which “equality in word,” as opposed to “equality in deed,” has been achieved, of course, is arguable and has been spotty, at best.
It is not just chance that, until the rise of Donald Trump, though, racists have been restricted to speaking in code since the 1970s. Now they’ve dropped the codes as they rally for racism.
