Happy MLK Day!

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: antiqueshell
It is natural law that each race has the God given right to determine its own destiny, separate from others.


Wow. Can you elaborate on that? Did someone tell you that this is natural law or is this something you've determined for yourself? What is a "race"? How many are there? Where and what are the points of demarcation twixt different ones?

 

[PandaBear]

Every politician becomes a saint when he dies.

While I 100% agree with Dr. MLK's opinion and speech. I do not believe as an individual he is any different from the rest of us. You can say the same about any other past leader (of politics or business) who becomes a saint for those who believe in the "good old days" or got quoted for everything he or she said. He did get assassinated, so I guess it is fair that he got a day to honor him.

Examples:

1. George Washington
2. Ronald Reagan
3. Abe Lincoln
4. Queen Victoria
5. Queen Isabelle
6. Dr Sun Yat Sin (Republic of China, aka Taiwan)
7. Chairman Mao (Communist China)
8. Bill Clinton
9. Winston Churchill
10. Steve Jobs


The list goes on...

 

[FoxS]

Having fought for their own freedom from the British, then for world freedom in WWI & WWII, and then for the freedom of those in Europe and Asia, America somehow justified denying freedom to a whole class of people based on the color of their skin. People who had fought for the freedom of their countrymen and other citizens of the world in the aforementioned wars while having no freedom of their own.

And after suffering through slavery and second class citizenry, a man led that entire race of oppressed people peacefully to demand equality.

And the main response on this thread is how he isn't a perfect man or why affirmative action is bad. Huh?

MLK was a great man. He is up there with Gandhi and Churchill in my book. If it was Gandhi day would we be complaining he was a lawyer once. If it were a day to commemorate Churchill, by God, you could find many things to criticize him about, be in no doubt about that!

Nobody is beyond criticism but the focus on negatives without any acknowledgement of the achievement is mind boggling and inexplicable

 

[andrewg]

Originally Posted By: FoxS
Having fought for their own freedom from the British, then for world freedom in WWI & WWII, and then for the freedom of those in Europe and Asia, America somehow justified denying freedom to a whole class of people based on the color of their skin. People who had fought for the freedom of their countrymen and other citizens of the world in the aforementioned wars while having no freedom of their own.

And after suffering through slavery and second class citizenry, a man led that entire race of oppressed people peacefully to demand equality.

And the main response on this thread is how he isn't a perfect man or why affirmative action is bad. Huh?

MLK was a great man. He is up there with Gandhi and Churchill in my book. If it was Gandhi day would we be complaining he was a lawyer once. If it were a day to commemorate Churchill, by God, you could find many things to criticize him about, be in no doubt about that!

Nobody is beyond criticism but the focus on negatives without any acknowledgement of the achievement is mind boggling and inexplicable

That's all that is done today....in the general media and in our current culture. MLK is placed very high on a pedastal as though he were a God or something. I dont know what planet you live on but seriously, what is wrong with voicing an opinion about the man based on his own principles?? Talking out of both sides of the mouth is not a virtue.

 

[mechanicx]

Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if I was 100% black and not Caucasian with blue eyes...

Would I be in the same place today ?



That's a silly thing to say. You could still be a blue eyed (or brown or green eyed) Caucasian but born into poverty and a dysfunctional family, with little chance to improve your lot in life. There's numerically more whites in poverty than any other group.

 

[andrewg]

Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if I was 100% black and not Caucasian with blue eyes...

Would I be in the same place today ?


If you were black you would not have the same parents nor would you have been raised exactly as you were raised. Your personality would differ as well since you would not be....YOU. Kind of an odd ponder....makes little sense. Not trying to be rude though.

 

[Loobed]

MLKJ was a communist, a plagiarist, and a woman beater.

Everything you hear or read about him in the media is made up.

 

[andrewg]

Originally Posted By: Loobed


MLKJ was a communist, a plagiarist, and a woman beater.

Everything you hear or read about him in the media is made up.


Don't hold back now. Lol...and I thought I was plain speaking!

 

[FoxS]

Originally Posted By: Loobed


MLKJ was a communist, a plagiarist, and a woman beater.

Everything you hear or read about him in the media is made up.



Hitler was anti communist, an original thought leader and kind to his mistress.

Everything you hear or read ..............

LOL

 

[Loobed]

Originally Posted By: FoxS
Originally Posted By: Loobed


MLKJ was a communist, a plagiarist, and a woman beater.

Everything you hear or read about him in the media is made up.



Hitler was anti communist, an original thought leader and kind to his mistress.

Everything you hear or read ..............

LOL




"Everything you hear or read about him in the media is made up."

What I said about MLKJ can also be said for Hitler. I don't believe in bulldung propoganda.

 

[refaller]

I think it is hard for me to have any idea what life was like back then. This I know, it had to change and someone had to lead the change. He lead knowing it would probably cost him his life and he still did it. Not sure if I would make that choice. Character flaws? Sure. Washington and Jefferson raped slaves, but we still honor them, don't we?

If I was black, my grandparents wouldn't have owned the farms or worked continuously in the steel mill as the did. Nor would that have been passed on to me. Like it or not, I have benefited because of my skin color.

ref

 

[javacontour]

If we are going into dirty laundry, I don't think we want to miss the fact about where many (most?) slaves came from? African tribes who raided or defeated rival tribes sold the vanquished into slavery.

Slavery wasn't a white/black issue. It was an issue of character. There were players with bad character from both the major race groups in the game, not just the white Europeans. Black Africans were just as complicit when selling out their conquered brothers and sisters.

I refuse to accept white guilt. I never owned slaves, I have no past behavior for which I need to atone.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Loobed
"Everything you hear or read about him in the media is made up."

What I said about MLKJ can also be said for Hitler. I don't believe in bulldung propoganda.


So the "takeaway" here seems to be that the media makes everything up, but the whiny anonymous internet troll who can't spell "propaganda" speaks the One True Truth?

Loobed, would you please tell us more real truth about things that the media make up? (MLK, I don't think, ever made any pretenses about his belief in communism. Had the media ever reported that he was a capitalist?)

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: javacontour
If we are going into dirty laundry, I don't think we want to miss the fact about where many (most?) slaves came from? African tribes who raided or defeated rival tribes sold the vanquished into slavery.

Slavery wasn't a white/black issue. It was an issue of character. There were players with bad character from both the major race groups in the game, not just the white Europeans. Black Africans were just as complicit when selling out their conquered brothers and sisters.

I refuse to accept white guilt. I never owned slaves, I have no past behavior for which I need to atone.


Slavery, sure, but MLK wasn't fighting to free the slave, that's Lincoln.

What MLK did with others was to fight the segregation. I'm sure you don't believe that the "white only" seating, toilets, schools, swimming pools, etc are made up. Segregation is something that should have and would have been demolished, sooner or later. I'm sure you'll agree about that (or at least pretend to agree about that in public).

Today IMO most of the disagreement in the general public is about affirmative action, whether it is giving the minority an unfair advantage (or disadvantage to the Asian), and whether it is hurting the minorities by putting them in positions that they are not really ready for without working for it (i.e. going to a challenging school that they later flunk out, putting them in leadership positions that take down an organization, etc), and whether efforts to help them reaching the readiness (i.e. free tutoring, free training, etc) is better than just stuffing them in the position due to their ethnics.

 

[javacontour]

I never said they were made up.

What I said was I'm not going to fall victim to a heart strings tugging argument based on guilt. Especially if the ones making the argument frequently give their pet group a pass on any guilty they may share in why the situation came about.

I've seen first hand how putting folks in situations as you describe, when they are not ready, only sets them up for failure. The failure has nothing to do with their race, or a system stacked against their race. It has to do with that individual not being ready for the challenge they are given.

It doesn't mean they can't or won't be ready.

I earned multiple degrees from a top 25 university and saw first hand both successes and failures of affirmative action. More failure than success. But in every case, race had nothing to do with either outcome. The student was or was not up to the challenge during that instant in time.

I worked for an 8A government contractor in the 1990's. Once they had graduated through the program and could no longer win contracts as an 8A minority owned business, they just about collapsed. Again, it wasn't because of race, it was because they wouldn't or didn't bother to learn how to compete as equals in the marketplace.

So I argue, instead of trying to make later generations feel guilty about what earlier generations did in order to extract some benefit, why not emphasis the benefits of choosing the best qualified individual for a particular task?

After all, logically speaking, it is in the best interest of a company to choose the best qualified person for the job. If they are looking to be the best, then it would make sense that it's in their best interest to hire the best.

Making a particular group feel guilty does little to encourage hiring the best. Nor does it encourage other groups to be the best.

For example, I hired a Russian programmer in the 1990's. Why? Because I could see that she was an excellent programmer. If she was able to accomplish what she said she did using the outdated hardware smuggled into the Soviet bloc, then she was head and shoulders above most of the graduates we were turning out in the US.

I didn't hire her to meet some quota for so many women. I hired her because she was the best candidate for the job.

She had lots of disadvantages to cite. Her English was far from perfect, she wasn't native born, she was a woman, she was older, and so on. But she played up her strengths and I hired her due to strengths.

I personally believe that is what Dr King was fighting for. I don't believe programs that set aside opportunities based on race and/or gender accomplish his stated goals.

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear

Slavery, sure, but MLK wasn't fighting to free the slave, that's Lincoln.

MLK was a big believer in reparations due to slavery of the past:

Quote:
PLAYBOY: Along with the other civil rights leaders, you have often proposed a massive program of economic aid, financed by the federal government, to improve the lot of the nation’s 20,000,000 Negroes. Just one of the projects you’ve mentioned, however—the HARYOU-ACT program to provide jobs for Negro youths—is expected to cost $141,000,000 over the next ten years, and that includes only Harlem. A nationwide program such as you propose would undoubtedly run into the billions.
MARTIN LUTHER KING: About 50 billion, actually—which is less than one year of our present defense spending. It is my belief that with the expenditure of this amount, over a ten-year period, a genuine and dramatic transformation could be achieved in the conditions of Negro life in America. I am positive, moreover, that the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils.

Quote:
PLAYBOY: Do you feel it’s fair to request a multibillion-dollar program of preferential treatment for the Negro, or for any other minority group?
MARTIN LUTHER KING: I do indeed. Can any fair-minded citizen deny that the Negro has been deprived? Few people reflect that for two centuries the Negro was enslaved, and robbed of any wages—potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America’s wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation. It is an economic fact that a program such as I propose would certainly cost far less than any computation of two centuries of unpaid wages plus accumulated interest. In any case, I do not intend that this program of economic aid should apply only to the Negro; it should benefit the disadvantaged of all races.

http://holygypsy.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/martin-luther-king-jr-playboy-interview/

So he felt that current whites had to pay the price for "their" past crimes of slavery...which had been abolished 100 years before he made those statements in 1965.

 

[mechtech2]

Originally Posted By: javacontour
If we are going into dirty laundry, I don't think we want to miss the fact about where many (most?) slaves came from? African tribes who raided or defeated rival tribes sold the vanquished into slavery.

Slavery wasn't a white/black issue. It was an issue of character. There were players with bad character from both the major race groups in the game, not just the white Europeans. Black Africans were just as complicit when selling out their conquered brothers and sisters.

I refuse to accept white guilt. I never owned slaves, I have no past behavior for which I need to atone.


And that about 276,000 blacks owned slaves [for various reasons]in this country.

 

[mechanicx]

Originally Posted By: javacontour
If we are going into dirty laundry, I don't think we want to miss the fact about where many (most?) slaves came from? African tribes who raided or defeated rival tribes sold the vanquished into slavery.

Slavery wasn't a white/black issue. It was an issue of character. There were players with bad character from both the major race groups in the game, not just the white Europeans. Black Africans were just as complicit when selling out their conquered brothers and sisters.

I refuse to accept white guilt. I never owned slaves, I have no past behavior for which I need to atone.


And as unpleasant or not being a slave may have been it begs the question of just how worse off were these slaves vs remaining where they came from? It's not like they were taken out of a peaceful and prosperous country. Apparently none of them wanted to go back even if transportation was provided.

Life was tough for lots of people prior to 1860, heck even in modern times. In the past even European children served many years as slaves along side black slaves to pay off debt to come to America. And they were coming from Britian, not exactly a 3rd world area. That's rarely mentioned. How relevant is the past in the 1800's to the 1960s, let alone today? I'd say not much. But the main thing is I don't believe the Civil Rights Movement and leaders wanted equal treatment. They wanted preferential treatment and that's what they got. Past slavery doesn't really have one thing to do with it. Groups want preferential treatment regardless of the actual past.

 

[mechtech2]

In my post, I said something backwards^.
Thanks to the edit non feature, I have to amend it here:
276 slaves were owned by black owner's in this country, is correct.

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
What about the decline of the black family? In 1960, only 28 percent of black females between the ages of 15 and 44 were never married. Today, it's 56 percent. In 1940, the illegitimacy rate among blacks was 19 percent, in 1960, 22 percent, and today, it's 70 percent. Some argue that the state of the black family is the result of the legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty. That has to be nonsense. A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of black families were nuclear families, comprised of two parents and children. In New York City in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households had two parents. In fact, according to Herbert Gutman in "The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750-1925," "Five in six children under the age of 6 lived with both parents." Therefore, if one argues that what we see today is a result of a legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty, what's the explanation for stronger black families at a time much closer to slavery — a time of much greater discrimination and of much greater poverty? I think that a good part of the answer is there were no welfare and Great Society programs.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams060805.asp