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<DIV>There must be something interesting we can talk about. I doubt if Time
magazine is going to print this letter, so maybe I should toss it out here for
dissection. (It is a response to Jesse Jackson's shamelessly opportunistic
"Appreciation" of Rosa Parks, which Time for some unfathomable reason asked him
to write). I must admit, I cannot remember a time I have ever had any respect
for Jackson. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Siarlys</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>It is unfortunate that you chose Jesse Jackson to write your Appreciation
of Rosa Parks. He has diluted, rather than extolled, her sterling
accomplishments, with irrelevant political rhetoric. Perhaps most glaring is his
use of the 21st century cliche "red states" to refer to the former confederate
states who had laws explicitly segregating public life by race. At the time Mrs.
Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, anyone who heard a state described
as "red" would have understood that a majority of the state's voters supported
the Communist Party in the last election. No state from the short-lived
Confederacy would have given a majority of its votes to Republicans. Nor are
states of the old South uniformly "red" today, nor "red" states confined to
those that once had segregation laws. In states now stereotyped as "blue," there
was no shortage of restaurants and hotels where staff nervously said "We don't
serve Negroes here." (When I was a child, there was a joke about a man of dark
complexion who calmly replied "That's good, I don't want to eat one, bring me
some fried chicken.")</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Mrs. Parks took her stand within a legacy that stretched back through Paul
Robeson and W.E.B. Dubois, not merely a spark out of nowhere that ignited a mere
nine years of progress. On the other hand, she was hardly THE inspiration for
the 100 year struggle of the African National Congress, which began before she
was born. There is a huge difference between a native African majority fighting
for freedom from an immigrant "white" minority regime, and a stereotyped
minority fighting for freedom from laws favoring a "white" majority. Don't even
try to compare Tienanmen Square. While both <EM>Brown v. Board of Education</EM>
and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were important, the 1964 law had little to do
with enforcing school integration, and the <EM>Brown</EM> case had nothing to do
with jobs, housing, restaurants, trains, buses, or much of anything outside of
schools. Rosa Parks was never driven by any political agenda? Her whole life
<EM>was</EM> a political agenda, in the finest sense of the
word.</DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>