MLK would turn in his grave knowing what goes on today. How can "We" expect respect from others when "we" can't respect ourselves. All that those people like Rosa Parks and MLK fought for is almost for granted.
agreed.. I am white and i look at it like this. Rosa Parks, MLK, Condaleeza Rice, Colin Powel, Denzel Washington, Samuel Jackson all deserve great respect. They are great individuals. They are great people. Denzel and Sam Jackson are great actors. Powell and Rice are both great political figures. They came from nothing and have earned great positions of respect and power. Rosa Parks and MLK were great civil rights activists. Both took stands for what they believed. Yet look at other parts of black culture. You have gangs and rappers talking about hos and bitches. They don't even respect other people of their culture. Respect is not given. It is earned. People like MLK and such have it and always will. Even if it is someone i do not agree with on issues, I will still respect them and what they have achieved. Rappers and these sports stars who that they just deserve respect and still commit crimes or such will not have it. If they achive something through hard work and make a good living i respect them. It was about equal rights back then. It was "give us the same opportunities as a white person". Now people take it for granted. They just don't care. and that is just sad.
Couldn't have said that better myself. What I hate even more is how people know more about Tupac and Biggie more than they know of the names you mentioned. And how they can know the lyrics to one of their songs and can't even recite a prayer or even know MLK's speech "I Have A Dream". This world is so ass backwards. Black people have a lot to learn. Rap is the light at the end of the tunnel. Every guy wants to rap or get into music or sell drugs. Or ROB HIS OWN BROTHER, than get a job. WOmen just wanna sit home and have kids. Its not all of us just enough. I don't understand it. Well glad I beat the odds and I wanna pass the same on to my kids. SHit I won't even let them listen to the radio if I have to.
So far, it looks like those kids have a hell of an awesome future ahead of them, too. I can't add any more to what Tom & Rattrap are saying, they put it very eloquently. You know, I was going to try and post this uplifting, positive message about how "things will get better between all of the races in America" when I realized that I would mostly be speaking from personal experience. What do I know? I'm stuck in DC, where the underlying racism continues to tear the two social classes in this town farther apart. The rich and uncaring escape farther into Northern Virginia while those who make just-not-enough push on in DC, NoVa and inner NoVa. Nobody talks to each other, race is handled like mother's wine glasses when it's mentioned in the news and people still shout racist crap at each other - both in the district and, if you catch the right driver on the right morning, in the suburbs. I wish MLK's words had had as profound an effect on the rest of the population as they had on me. I wish the rest of the Northern Virginia area could have actually gotten to meet Rosa Parks. Alas, they didn't and they can't now, and they'll probably remind as racist or socially inept as they can, so long as they keep making money. God, I hate this town.
Wanna hear irony. At least in Philly this is true, Rosa Parks fought so we could sit at the front of this bus yet we still go to the back.
This is one of my favorite portions of his speeches. Wonderful oratory. "When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will, and drown your sisters and brothers at whim, 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 air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society, when you suddenly find your tongue twisted, and your speech stammering, as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park, and see her developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people, 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 humiliated day-in and day-out by nagging signs reading 'White' and 'Colored', when your first name becomes '******', your middle name becomes 'Boy', however old you are, and your last name becomes 'John', and your wife and mother are never given the respected title 'Missus', when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments, when you are forever fighting a degrading and degenerating sense of nobodiness... then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait." -MLK, 4/16/63
I like the strip, the show not so much. But McGruder did once tell Eric Alterman (essentially) to fuck off, so he gets 100,000 points for that alone. Happy MLK day...I'm off to work.
Well, don't be TOO hard on them. Technically, his birthday was yesterday, the 15th. Today's just the legal holiday.
Technically, it was yesterday. But like any important day, we bump official observance to the nearest Monday and give everybody the day off in order to properly honor the occasion. Edit: Dammit Jux!
