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Was MLK "woke"?

Was MLK "woke"?


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If you mean the culture of whites denies opportunities to blacks, then yes.
The closest thing I have seen still has to do with what I have been saying "culture."

Do you think a white Hillbilly does any better in opportunity as a black from the ghettos?

Again. Opportunity isn't about color. It's nore about how a person presents themself in manners and speaking.
 
The closest thing I have seen still has to do with what I have been saying "culture."

Do you think a white Hillbilly does any better in opportunity as a black from the ghettos?

Again. Opportunity isn't about color. It's nore about how a person presents themself in manners and speaking.

You conveniently forget that black ghettos were created by white folks. You think white folks gave changed that much?


You don't see many cops beating hillbillies to death. They'll beat a black guy to death, and he doesn't even need to be living in the ghetto.

The farther blacks get from the ghetto and whites get from Hillbilly land, the larger their gaps on income become.
 
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How many of these folks would insist they are color blind? I bet all of them. But they see culture.



Crickets from those who "don't see race."

Its an argument they're wise to abandon.
 
You conveniently forget that black ghettos were created by white folks. You think white folks gave changed that much?
You sure like blaming others...
You don't see many cops beating hillbillies to death. They'll beat a black guy to death, and he doesn't even need to be living in the ghetto.
I'll bet that's only because it isn't news worthy.
The farther blacks get from the ghetto and whites get from Hillbilly land, the larger their gaps on income become.
There are plenty of poor white people.
 
No you are. You watch too much FOX. That statement in itself makes absolutely no sensemble. Who say that. Not liberals.
Lol...I don't really watch Fox. I haven't had cable for years so I only watch it when random things pop up here or in my timeline on other platforms, and it's no more than any other source. The fact that you're trying to use that as a rebuttal only proves the weakness of your position.

The fact is liberals, yes liberals, say that color blindness is racist. Now you have two choice before you. You can either do minimal research and find out, fairly quickly, that I'm correct and slink off or you can try and call bullshit again and I'll provide the goods and you'll look even more silly.
 
Color blindness is a privilege. Generally speaking, its reserved for whites. It's not really an option for black folks.
Of course it's for everyone, because it's a person belief in how you should interact with people. No one controls that but the person themselves.
But let's be honest, everybody sees color. For the most part, anyone who claims they are color blind is simply practicing their privilege
I don't think you know what color blindness means. It doesn't mean you don't recognize a Black person, white person, Asian person, ect. when you're interacting with them. It means that you don't treat them differently, or ascribe any particular attributes to them, based on their race. It means you treat each person as an individual unto themselves.

Everyone can do that. Those who don't have racial bigotry inside them that they have to deal with and is cut from the same cloth as open and avowed racists.
 
Color blindness is a privilege. Generally speaking, its reserved for whites. It's not really an option for black folks.
It appears you are claiming its the blacks who are racist.
But let's be honest, everybody sees color. For the most part, anyone who claims they are color blind is simply practicing their privilege
I see skin color no different then hair or eye color. It simply physical appearance differences among people.
 
That's your mic drop moment? The fascist MAGA right is gonna speculate on how King would be seen by the left, if they (the racist right) hadn't assassinated him all those years ago?
If Jesus was here today the religious right would crucify him!!! It's easy to make claims about dead people.
Not crucify him, but most would not recognize him and then reject him. My guess the word "woke" would be invoked in that rejection.
 
That's your definition. An exagerated definition as the right does with everything like CRT and BLM. To be woke is to be aware. If whites are woke, are you saying that they are calling themselves racist? See how your definition of woke is silly. There is still systemic racism. You are not aware of it because you are not woke. You are asleep to the systemic racist practices that are still going on. You have no idea what MLK would have thought. That is because you are not "woke" enough to read his speeches and writings other than his "I Have A Dream" speech.

There probably aren't many here who lived through the civil rights era. I was a little kid when MLK was killed, but his legacy loomed large in my childhood, when integration was still very new and very controversial.

I look back and remember when racism was pervasive, systemic, overt and ubiquitous. I remember when most black folks lived in impoverished neighborhood full of ramshackle houses, and relatively few went to college. I remember when there were few black business owners and those mostly had a business the "the hood", and blacks in positions of authority were rare.

I look around now, and I see such tremendous, incredible progress since I was a kid: black judges, congressmen, senators, presidents, millionaires. I go to the state college I attended and half the students are black, and more females than males. I see high-$$ subdivisions with big houses and manicured lawns and almost as many black folks as white.

It's hard for someone my age to see so much progress and not think "What the hell are you complaining about? You made it. You won. You're there, where MLK wanted you to be... all you have to do is reach out and take it."

I'm not saying there aren't still a few problems that need addressed... hell there always are for everybody, aren't there. But the comparison to an era I still remember is, you won the war, why are you acting like you lost and its still 1964?

That's my perspective as best I can explain it. If you want to hate me for it, knock yourself out.
 
It's hard for someone my age to see so much progress and not think "What the hell are you complaining about? You made it. You won. You're there, where MLK wanted you to be... all you have to do is reach out and take it."
This is so true. there has been progress to the point that there is equal opportunity. People just have to grab it and hold on.
I'm not saying there aren't still a few problems that need addressed... hell there always are for everybody, aren't there. But the comparison to an era I still remember is, you won the war, why are you acting like you lost and its still 1964?
The lefties are just like crybabies. "I want it now mommy."
 
Woke is the polar opposite of colorblindness. Woke is defined as seeing things as they really are, while colorblindness is a method of not seeing (therefore understanding) people as they are, without different cultures beliefs. The Colorblind don't understand why a parent has to have the Talk with their boys or why "certain people" once had to give up their seat, if certain people wanted to sit their. That Fla. text book is an attempt to bury racist history in a colorblind "whitewash".
So yeah MLK jr. was defiantly woke to the realities of race, poverty & military expansion & someone (maybe even James Earl Ray) began the whitewashing, with a bullet.
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Groups have always kept their spaces, what is new is, for example the Gay alphabet soup have not so much self- segregated as come out from the shadows of segregation & proclaimed "I'm _____________ & I'm proud." The Closet" was colorblind to the Beauty of the Rainbow.
Hey there, thanks for the reply. I "liked" your comment because you offered a rebuttal to my position without personal attack or vilification, and by offering a legitimate counter argument - it's appreciated.

I disagree that the idea of always noticing colour is a better alternative to not giving it importance - i.e. colourblindness vs wokeness. The past is riddled with horrors of attributing importance to skin colour, and it was seen as perfectly acceptable to treat people differently purely on that single attribute. It seems to me that although we, as a society, are trying to use this tactic as a force for good, in reversing the arrow of bad attribution to positive attribution, we're still focusing on the racial bits of a person as the most important aspects of a person.

I really do think this reinforces habits of uncritical thinking (always along racial lines), and it won't take much for us to slip back into force segregation and a racist populist uprising. I fear we are setting in motion the undoing of all the societal gains we've made in the last 3 decades.

I hope I'm wrong.

Again - thank you for your fair and considered reply.
 
I'm proud of our woke generation. They have accomplished a lot.


I'm proud of my generation.

Before me and my peers, there was no Martin Luther King.

Before white people started marching with King, the "revolution" was marred in southern mud and the blood of very brave black people.

No, Dr. King was not 'woke', he 'woke' blacks and whites to the possibility that change COULD happen.

For anyone under 50, have a view of the film "Mississippi Burning." It was life in the US when I was ten.

And yes, watching churches burn in the night on TV every night did have an affect on good people. We were offended and angry on learning the American dream was bullshit and the country was run by ignorant, uneducated racist thugs with tobbacco juice for brains.

Yes! If that is "Woke" then I am DEFINITELY WOKE AND ANGRY!

50 ****ing years is too long to be lied to, don't you think?

I just now decided to start another little business.....T-shits" "I am Woke! What are you going to do about it?"

High quality unshrinkible Hanes, $100 each, proceeds to the "let jails Trump" party.
 
Lol...I don't really watch Fox. I haven't had cable for years so I only watch it when random things pop up here or in my timeline on other platforms, and it's no more than any other source. The fact that you're trying to use that as a rebuttal only proves the weakness of your position.

The fact is liberals, yes liberals, say that color blindness is racist. Now you have two choice before you. You can either do minimal research and find out, fairly quickly, that I'm correct and slink off or you can try and call bullshit again and I'll provide the goods and you'll look even more silly.
You keep saying that but you have no proof of that. That is what you believe, but I know you never heard a white liberal say that colorblindness is racist. Why should I research what you say. If you make a statemen t, it is up to you to prove if not me. Now you have two choices, either you prove your statement or shut the **** up
 
There probably aren't many here who lived through the civil rights era. I was a little kid when MLK was killed, but his legacy loomed large in my childhood, when integration was still very new and very controversial.

I look back and remember when racism was pervasive, systemic, overt and ubiquitous. I remember when most black folks lived in impoverished neighborhood full of ramshackle houses, and relatively few went to college. I remember when there were few black business owners and those mostly had a business the "the hood", and blacks in positions of authority were rare.

I look around now, and I see such tremendous, incredible progress since I was a kid: black judges, congressmen, senators, presidents, millionaires. I go to the state college I attended and half the students are black, and more females than males. I see high-$$ subdivisions with big houses and manicured lawns and almost as many black folks as white.

It's hard for someone my age to see so much progress and not think "What the hell are you complaining about? You made it. You won. You're there, where MLK wanted you to be... all you have to do is reach out and take it."

I'm not saying there aren't still a few problems that need addressed... hell there always are for everybody, aren't there. But the comparison to an era I still remember is, you won the war, why are you acting like you lost and its still 1964?

That's my perspective as best I can explain it. If you want to hate me for it, knock yourself out.
As I said prior, yes, things aren't as bad as they were, but there is much that can be improved and only those who experience racism can understand that and those who are "woke" can understand as well
 
There probably aren't many here who lived through the civil rights era. I was a little kid when MLK was killed, but his legacy loomed large in my childhood, when integration was still very new and very controversial.

I look back and remember when racism was pervasive, systemic, overt and ubiquitous. I remember when most black folks lived in impoverished neighborhood full of ramshackle houses, and relatively few went to college. I remember when there were few black business owners and those mostly had a business the "the hood", and blacks in positions of authority were rare.

I look around now, and I see such tremendous, incredible progress since I was a kid: black judges, congressmen, senators, presidents, millionaires. I go to the state college I attended and half the students are black, and more females than males. I see high-$$ subdivisions with big houses and manicured lawns and almost as many black folks as white.

It's hard for someone my age to see so much progress and not think "What the hell are you complaining about? You made it. You won. You're there, where MLK wanted you to be... all you have to do is reach out and take it."

I'm not saying there aren't still a few problems that need addressed... hell there always are for everybody, aren't there. But the comparison to an era I still remember is, you won the war, why are you acting like you lost and its still 1964?

That's my perspective as best I can explain it. If you want to hate me for it, knock yourself out.


I was under ten when I moved from a rural Ontario farmhouse without running water or TV to the edges of Buffalo, where the south and southeast of the city housed poor white and black families. It was referred to as "the jungle" either a reference to or from the book "The Blackboard Jungle".
If you were hip at all, you hung with your color. I didn't know that and got beat up a lot.

We were 'woke'. You kept your head up and your eyes open and you avoided anything with a uniform. You got seen talking to a Poleeese, you were in for at least some shoving and pushing. There were NO colored Poleeese, they were all white and hated kids.

That was our bond. When you knew the rules of the jungle, you were in even when you were out. You could be the 'wrong' color, if you were white and your tribe was mostly colored. But you were not "them", the people of authority who used that authority in every possible way every second!

I wasn't a tough kid. My safety was with the colored kids, they liked me because I could whistle through my nose and I could shoot a hockey puck. I was also superior at stealing apples and other food from local shops.

As I grew I discovered two books, both tossed in the garbage (it was how I got money, caging dumpsters). The first was the story of Amelia Earhart who inspired me to be more than I was, and this preacher guy who talked about Jesus as though he was standing right there! All I'd ever had was nuns beating Chatechism into me, I didn't know anything about Jesus other than he died hard.

It was Dr. King. My library and education were formed around two characters, a woman pilot and a black preacher, and one other person: Bobby Orr.

We have indeed come a long way. With so, so many miles still to go.........................

The book "A testament of Hope" a collection of King's writings and sermons sits on my desk. I like to let it fall open and see what inspiration leaps of the page. He and Amelia sure changed my life. Bobby Orr? Not so much.
 
There are no such thing as woke liberals who cannot stand the idea of unity. That is a strawman. All the divisive is coming from the right wing nutters crying about woke.

MLK was not pushing for unity as his main goal, but for true equality stemming from a true change of heart of white attitudes toward blacks. He didn’t see this happen before he was assassinated.

Actually it is not a strawman, and it is very prejudicial to say the only divisiveness is purely on "right wing nutters."

The irony on your post is pushing for equality under the law and changing the hearts of those who favored unequal treatment is fundamentally all about unity through advancement. MLK was not about cancelling or removing anyone.
 
Absolutely not, MLK loved his enemy and wanted unity.
He didn't want unity at the expense of justice. He wanted whites to wake up.

Here's a few excerpts from "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." Let us know which of these you agree with -- or who it sounds most like today, a conservative or a progressive.

And remember, when he was alive, white moderates and conservatives alike classified him as an extremist whose activism would "precipitate violence."


Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have... seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society... when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”.... when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.


Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place....


I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it.
 
I'm not saying there aren't issues that need to be addressed, still.

I'm saying this "woke" business is a business, whose business is finding imaginary racism under every bed and in every closet.


After all this time, the years, the body count and you STILL think racism is "imaginary"?

White's are offended. And should be. But no one is LOOKING for racism anywhere. It's IN YOUR FACE every ****ing minute of every day! What more do you need! We've just had over a month of videos of a GANG of heavily armed and armored cops systematically beat a man half to death, chase him across town, and then finish the job, THEN smugly stand around over his dying body like two bit biker thugs!

I'd say they need to START looking under every bed, because it seems if you scratch a cop or a mall wannabe you get a violent racist! Start looking under the beds of the politicians who have let this happen, and the **** sucking judges, lawyers and slime who have been burying this. When we nail the wrong guy by mistake, we will apologize, but it hasn't happened yet so dig deeper, draw more blood and nail these ****s.
 



The book I found had no cover and was missing much of the forward etc.

It started where she got in trouble for creating a ramp out of wood on her front steps and rode a wagon down it while holding a huge cardboard wing. She was injured and taken to the hospital and she cheered herself all the way there with "I did it, I did it!"
I wanted her as a my best friend. I cried when I learned she was dead, died before the book was written.
I was kind of slow as a child, it took me almost two years to read it all. I didn't know 40% of the words. She changed my life. I didn't become a pilot. I became a writer,
 
Hey there, thanks for the reply. I "liked" your comment because you offered a rebuttal to my position without personal attack or vilification, and by offering a legitimate counter argument - it's appreciated.

I disagree that the idea of always noticing colour is a better alternative to not giving it importance - i.e. colourblindness vs wokeness. The past is riddled with horrors of attributing importance to skin colour, and it was seen as perfectly acceptable to treat people differently purely on that single attribute. It seems to me that although we, as a society, are trying to use this tactic as a force for good, in reversing the arrow of bad attribution to positive attribution, we're still focusing on the racial bits of a person as the most important aspects of a person.

I really do think this reinforces habits of uncritical thinking (always along racial lines), and it won't take much for us to slip back into force segregation and a racist populist uprising. I fear we are setting in motion the undoing of all the societal gains we've made in the last 3 decades.

I hope I'm wrong.

Again - thank you for your fair and considered reply.


I am guilty of that. It's automatic. I am with a black person, and I know many, I alter my behavior because of my "perceived" ideas of their history of mistreatment. It's automatic and I have no control over it.

I've discussed it. No one is really offended by it, but I know its there.

But then again I treat catholics differently too, but because I was abused by them. I believe we are hard wired about taking differences into account, and we have been socially poisoned by widespread incidents of ugliness with regard to skin color in particular.

I do not know how to correct this: the day after seeing the likes of Rodney King or George Floyd I am less comfortable around black people. I call it guilt. My race is nothing to be proud of and they have ever right to hold me accountable.
 
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