[GCFL-discuss] Jackson on Parks

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

And I thought that meant Dem vs Rep!

Lance

On 11/2/05, Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List <
gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net> wrote:
>
> Didn't the press make up the RED states and Blue states just for something
> to write about ??
>  Dave
>
> ----- *Subject:* [GCFL-discuss] Jackson on Parks
>
> 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.
>  Siarlys
>    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.")
>  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 *Brown
> v. Board of Education* and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were important,
> the 1964 law had little to do with enforcing school integration, and the *
> Brown* 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 *was* a political agenda, in the
> finest sense of the word.
>
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