General News ‘Eric Sheppard challenge’: U.S. flag stomped on for wanted college student

Well, Jefferson definitely knew better. I wouldn't discredit his intelligence just because he lived a few hundred years ago. However, I would say you could make a comparison of slavery to what we all do today... Such as buying things we (often) don't need from sweatshops, which are very nearly slave labor. We all know it happens, almost all of us do it (unless we can afford not to), and we all know it's bad. We'd rather just ignore it, though, and continue to live well and make no sacrifices.

 

Alright, listen. Black people are killed and dehumanized because they are black. Not because they riot or because they wear their pants below their waist. Racism doesn't care. What you are promoting is called respectability politics, and that only works for the few that can assimilate to the dominant culture. Its the same reason why you think the LGBT activism has been peaceful for the most part; because the only LGBT activism that you know is white, cis and rich.

The information gap is way too large to be able to have a conversation about the dynamics at play in America right now, so I will just let this go.

I will say this, though. Unless you are helping Baltimore in some way like donating to their churches so they can feed the hundreds of kids without food because school is out or helping put the spotlight in the thousands of people protesting without any violence then your words are meaningless. You are simply arguing for the sake debating hypotheticals and theory.

Use the energy that you have for this thread and get involved. Do something if you truly care.

 

No, King would have went to them, and tried to show them a better way to channel their anger and frustration. He would NOT have condemned them, as you are doing. He wouldn't have tried to silence or pacify them, as you are doing.

Were King alive and taking action in Baltimore today, the city would have bigger problems than a few riots. The city would effectively be shut down and non-operational. The jails would be overflowing with nonviolent civil resisters, seeking to disrupt and bring the city to a screeching halt. King would be encouraging solidarity protests in other cities all across the country.

There wouldn't be a simple little march down the street, or people simply waving signs. These are things that the oppressor can tolerate. The purpose of nonviolent resistance was to put the state in an impossible position. It would have its citizens, on one hand, making sensible demands. They would be acting in a way that was nonthreatening (even if it was disruptive) to the state. In return, the state would be required to make one of three difficult decisions. It's first choice would be to do nothing, try to wait them out, and hope that the nonviolent resistance ends soon. This is their best choice, strategically, but this shows the state to be powerless before the people. It's second choice is to try and enforce its laws in a relatively nonviolent manner. This is usually the choice made by the state nowadays. However, the nonviolent resister knows that the jails have occupancy limits. So, his goal, at this point, is to cause them to fill all the surrounding jails up with people--basically clog the system. So, while this may be effective for the state in the short term, it is not an effective solution in the medium to long term. This brings us to the third choice before the state, and that is a harsh crackdown. This is what every nonviolent resister secretly hopes for from the state, and is in some ways seeking to provoke. When the state strikes out violently against nonviolent people, it causes people to become enraged. It brings legitimacy to the nonviolent resisters cause, and gives them a major propaganda victory. This causes more people to rise up against the state.

This is how nonviolent resistance works. It uses the states only form of power--violence--against itself. Nonviolence is always the best strategy when fighting against the state, because when you become violent the states forceful retaliation is legitimized. This is why rioting is bad, because it gives the state an excuse to crack down on people, and it leads to people like you identifying more with the state than the nonviolent resisters.

To even say that shows that you have no knowledge of how the states treated slaves. What was done to nonviolent resisters in the time of King, as bad as it was, was nothing compared to what happened to slaves. King would have had a noose around his neck the moment he had the courage to look a white man in the eyes, and all the other slaves would have been forced to watch. He likely would have been tortured to the brink of death in front of them first, just to push the point home clearly.

There was no amount of nonviolent resistance that could have ended slavery. Not unless every slave was willing to literally die, because that was the only way any of them were going to get a taste of freedom.

This is laughably false. Thomas Jefferson understood well his own hypocrisy. He called slavery a "moral depravity" and a "hideous blot." The problem with Thomas Jefferson, was not just that he held slaves, but he holds a heavy responsibility in making slavery worse in America. Understand, unlike George Washington who also owned slaves, Jefferson never freed his slaves despite the opportunity to do so. Washington freed his slaves.

It's important to understand that Thomas Jefferson held certain conditions in which he felt the freeing of slaves was acceptable. In the beginning, he believed that the emancipation of slaves should be democratically done, meaning that slave owners would have to consent to free their slaves in a large scale act. This obviously was never going to happen for obvious reasons, not to mention the immorality of holding this view--placing the freedom of another human being in the hands of his oppressor.

When it became obvious to Jefferson that the above was not going to happen, he came up with a three part plan. First, he wanted to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. Second, he wanted to have laws that required slave owners to end slavery's worst features, and gradually improve the lives of slaves. Third, he wanted all individuals born into slavery to be set free after a certain date, which would ultimately end in total abolition of all slaves. It's the second part that aided pro-slavery advocates. After all, they argued, if the living conditions of the slaves could be improved, why is there a need to liberate them?

This was further complicated by the fact that Jefferson believed that black and white people could never live together peacefully in the same country. So, as part of his beliefs on emancipation, he wanted to engage in the mass deportation of all black people in America back to Africa or some other place. He also considered black people as racially inferior in intellect and with a capability equivalent to children. He considered slavery similar to holding "a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go." He was terrified of what freed black people would do, that they might rise up and hold white people accountable for their actions.

So, over time, he backed away from his earlier rhetoric of slavery being a "moral depravity" and a "hideous blot." He started to rationalize the practice, and this further paved the way for slave owners across the United States to hold him up as a shining example of their own moral depravity. Here is where I will let the Smithsonian Magazine take up the story.

Jefferson's moral depravity and weakness helped set the stage for the Civil War. His willingness to accept enslavement, due to the fact that it profited him, is something that can't be ignored. He knew what he was doing was wrong. Yet, he continued to engage in injustice, even when the opportunity arose to emancipate his slaves by way of Thaddeus Kosciuszko.

And should Thomas Jefferson find himself failing in moral character, as he surely was, he only had to turn to his old revolutionary friend Thomas Paine, one of the earliest abolitionists. Paine took every argument for slavery and shredded it, and condemned, with appropriate fierceness, the injustice of the institution.

There was no excuse that can hide Thomas Jefferson's own hypocrisy, greed, and cruelty. Even as he spoke freedom and liberty out of one side of his mouth, he was speaking with the tongue of a slaver out of the other.

It is almost impossible, without really taking the time to think about it, just how inhumane slavery was -- it's not good enough to say that it was evil or bad. You must understand the depths of its injustice, and then the injustice and the consequences it had on everyone of the country, particularly black people. It is, for example, the only reason racism exists today.

The division of white and black people is a social division that does not really exist. It is created by our culture and its institutions. It makes as much logic sense to divide people up and define them based on their eye color. Therefore, anytime someone has a thought about "black people" as a whole it is a racist thought, because we see them as a group and not as individuals deserving of individual liberty and freedom. When people say, "black people act this way or think that way" it is a racist thought, even if it is meant to be positive. It is racist, because it assumes, by its very utterance, that all black people are this way or that, and they are made this way or that by virtue of the color of their skin. No one would say such a thing were we discussing eye color, as an example. No one would say, "All green eyed people are this way or that." It sounds ridiculous to the ears, because it is ridiculous.

The entire premise of white and black in our country was predicated on white people being superior to black people. One group of people, based only on the color of their skin, dominating, brutalizing, and controlling another people, based only on the color of their skin, for economic gain. This is the legacy handed down to us, the legacy that we all -- white and black alike -- have internalized within ourselves, and have created in our institutions.

In a truly just society, a society living under the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr., would be a society blind to race. It would make no more sense to discuss "black people" as a group as it would be to discuss people who have "green eyes" as a group. Yet, we cannot escape the legacy in our words and definitions. How do we talk about racism, for example, without creating the very divisions in language and thought that were created by the oppressors to start with? Further, if we were to achieve the lofty goal of King's dream, it would mean the eradication of black identity within our culture, because such an identity could not sustain itself without the institutions of the oppressor.

We, as gay people, face an identical problem. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is an immutable characteristic. We are not intrinsically different from straight people, but because of the institutions established by straights and the discrimination done to us we were required to develop gay identities. If we were to achieve ultimate victory in the culture war, all social institutions that discriminate against us and hold us back would be eradicated. We would be fully accepted as equals, and sexual orientation would fall to the same significance as eye color in the way people are treated. This would result in the destruction of gay identity, which only exists because we are oppressed.

This is something that I struggle with on a personal level. I am attached to my identity as a gay man, and would fight fiercely against it ever being erased. Not only that, I would tirelessly advocate for other LGBT people to embrace their identities. However, these are identities by their nature defined and limited by our oppressors. So, I am left to ask the question: Is it possible to redefine what it means to be a gay man, or to be black? Is it possible to define yourself, without playing into the hands of those that oppress us? Or, in order to achieve true equality, must people like myself cease to exist? Even as I fight for equality, am I dooming myself and others to permanent erasure?

That is the legacy of oppression and discrimination, and perhaps an ultimate consequence as well.