Comment: Today is Martin Luther King Day in the United States. Like many who lived in the 1960s, MLK and the Civil Rights Movement he led in the 1950s and 1960s continues to inspire many like me today.
I still remember the day when in junior high school in Hollywood we were told that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. It was in the afternoon in California since King Jr. was killed at 6:01 pm at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Of that day I remember two things: a sense of despair since, like the John F. Kennedy assassination, another great man had been killed; a white man on the radio said that he was happy that King Jr. had been killed.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eD_joYaasM&feature=youtu.be]
What can we learn in Finland about MLK and others that fought for social justice at the time like Malcolm X?
The most important lesson is that we can change and make history.
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by Hatty Lee, Terry Keleher
As we celebrate a new year and another Martin Luther King holiday, it’s a good time to reflect on how you can be part of some positive change in the year ahead. Rather than the typical resolutions, which can get a bit self-absorbed, why not resolve to step up your game in making social change? The good news is that you already have everything you need, just as you are, to become a powerful force for racial justice. You can be a Racial Transformer.
What’s that, you ask?
What we can learn from MLK’s techniques is that “pacifist” methods to stir up anger and violence, which then requires government internvention, is hardly a Gandhi-esque, peace-loving technique. Michael King Jr’s backing was the Communist Party, and his speechwriter a part of the Russia KGB, Levison. He was a stooge, and became their martyr. What a guy!
Don’t think that American people, who have just as quick Internet connections as the Finns, can’t find out who their “heroes” really are.
What immigrants in Finland could learn from MLK’s ideas is that provoking Finns through pissing on their homes, harassing them verbally and so on could bring on to them the violence that MLK wanted filmed for history. Then this could go out over the web to show that “Finns are racist”, and the whole world would yak about it.
Finnish police would be on camera quelling the riots that break out against “immigrants”. (No, we don’t mean Estonians, because then it wouldn’t be a ‘racist riot’).
Poor Finland if a MKjr gets a foothold in the “immigrant” community and starts agit-prop.
What would you have done to end segregation on the Montgomery buses, Mary?
As you celebrate one more excuse of not having a job, the rest of us are paying taxes.
Allan, don’t be a dick!
I am, not being a dick, Enrique is just celebrated 30 years in finland without a steady job blaming racim instead of looking in the mirror at the thick person.
@Mark for Allan.
Mark don’t call him a dick. Because he hasn’t one. Allan is the example of the gutter-butter coming from the ass. He shares that with MaryMekko who is worse than the sheep excrements.
They are so tied up in their gutter-butter that even the ghee is “black”. Nice metaphor don’t you think 🙂
So, let’s celebrate this MLK day.
Umm…Wow, MLK, Jr. was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. He was a human being just like the rest of us, after all. I’m sure that if he were still alive today, he would readily admit to and take responsibility for his mistakes and regrets. It is, however, important to discern fact from fiction where Dr. King is concerned. He encouraged civil disobedience which meant breaking laws and sometimes being arrested. Dr. King organized non-violent acts of defiance which spread across the U.S., particularly in the south. Obviously, he posed a threat to the establishment U.S. government, and most state and local governments too. Police, military officers, and, yes, many white racist organizations reacted to the non-violent protests with inexcusable violence – beatings, lynchings, bombings, and shootings in attempts to control and to continue to oppress minorities and even very poor, white people. But what many white Americans fail to understand is how the oppression of African Americans and other minority groups actually provides them with an unfair advantage in this country. That is the advantage of white privilege.
My main point is that the U.S. government and many of its agencies wrote and published many untruths and slanderous materials about Dr. King that were not true then and are not true now either. It wasn’t enough that Dr. King, the physical man, was assassinated. No, many people here in the U.S. continue to assassinate his character over and over again. My only response is this: “”What you say about somebody else – anybody else – reveals you. What I think of you as being, is dictated by my own necessity, my own psychology, my own fears and desires. I’m not describing you when I talk about you; I’m describing me…” ~ James Baldwin. (The video at the link is James Baldwin attempting to explain why white Americans actually created the “n-word”, in the first place and the implications of their “invention.” He uses the n-word to make an important point and to try to make people think…really think. Don’t follow it if you find the explanation of that word offensive. http://youtu.be/L0L5fciA6AU ).
Justicedemon, look up the true story of Rosa Parks. All of it was propaganda. The true story is thus: a very pregnant black teenage girl was standing on a full bus. No black or white offered her a seat. A Communist idea was born: why not stage a protest against this bus segregation by using not a young pregnant teen but an older, hard-working, intelligent mulatto woman who had propaganda training from the Southern Leadership group?
Rosa Parks (and MLK) were members of this group. She was approached as the perfect person to stage this protest, and the world bought the story, that she was coming home from a hard work day and wanted to sit down.
What anyone can notice, visiting the Bay Area and riding the public transit, is simple: blacks still prefer the backs of public buses. Their noise and aggression, especially amongst the angry black males predominating there, is atrocious. No white woman would go back there.
I experienced this hundreds of times growing up in 1970’s San Francisco. Even the drivers were afraid to intervene, and the police of SF, our SFPD, refused to be called “racists” and let the whites fend for themselves against horrid verbal harassment, sometimes physical.
If Finland is experiencing this kind of behavioral patterns, where races separate out on public transit, what would a Finn do? Should she walk right back and sit amongst angry Sudanese black youth!?? A Finnish Rosa Parks speaks up against verbal racist hatred in Finland, wow!
Mary
All completely irrelevant twaddle.
Why are you afraid to answer my simple question?
What would YOU have done to end segregation on the Montgomery buses?
I suspect the answer is “nothing”, because you are an unreconstituted racist. Assuming that I’m wrong, what would you have done to end this evil?
Justicedemon, I doubt that she’s going to answer your question because she seems to be following some of the “advice” offered here.: “You know how it is. You’re enjoying yourself, kicking back and relaxing at the pub or maybe at the library; or maybe you’re in class or just casually surfing the internet, indulging in a little conversation. The topic of the conversation is about a pertinent contemporary issue, probably something to do with a group of people who fall outside your realm of experience and identity. They’re also probably fairly heavily discriminated against – or so they claim.
The thing is, you’re having a good time, sharing your knowledge about these people and their issues. This knowledge is incontrovertible – it’s been backed up in media representation, books, research and lots and lots of historical events, also your own unassailable sense of being right.
Yet all of a sudden something happens to put a dampener on your sharing of your enviable intellect and incomparable capacity to fully perceive and understand All Things. It’s someone who belongs to the group of people you’re discussing and they’re Not Very Happy with you. Apparently, they claim, you’ve got it all wrong and they’re offended about that. They might be a person of colour, or a queer person. Maybe they’re a woman, or a person with disability. They could even be a trans person or a sex worker. The point is they’re trying to tell you they know better than you about their issues and you know that’s just plain wrong. How could you be wrong?
Don’t worry though! There IS something you can do to nip this potentially awkward and embarrassing situation in the bud. By simply derailing the conversation, dismissing their opinion as false and ridiculing their experience you can be sure that they continue to be marginalised and unheard and you can continue to look like the expert you know you really are, deep down inside!
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE PRIVILEGE!
Just follow this step-by-step guide to Conversing with Marginalised People™ and in no time at all you will have a fool-proof method of derailing every challenging conversation you may get into, thus reaping the full benefits of every privilege that you have.
Read on, and learn, and remember… you don’t have to use these in any particular order! In fact, mixing them up can really keep those Marginalised People™ on their toes! After all, they are pretty much used to hearing this stuff, so you don’t want to get too predictable or they’ll get lazy! ”
http://derailingfordummies.com
“What would you have done to end segregation on the Montgomery buses”
Bought a car
@Allan
You were there also??. You are a polyglot!! And got fined because of mental and environmental pollution!! 🙂
A high price for a simple buss-ticket:)
You are an economic disaster as well !!
Allan
Just like you tried to end racism in Finland by emigrating?
Blacks did boycott the buses by using cars, carpooling, etc.
My point is clear: come to the USA and see how the blacks self-segregate on buses.
It’s a natural tendency – no one is forcing them to the back anymore.
The US blacks have a giant chip on their shoulders, with perpetual anger at anyone who’s “White”. This would include any Finnish tourist walking down the street. If later, a cop would ask that Finn why he/she went through an obviously black area, didn’t he/she know how “dangerous” it was (i.e. that the blacks “hate” the “whites”), what should the Finn say? That she thought it was okay to mix in, that it was only the American whites who were “racist”?
If you think this scenario funny or improbable, I can tell you that it happens all the time in San Francisco, full of tourists. Northern European tourists walk smack into bad neighhorhoods, even seek out the black ghettos for the thrill of it. Little do they know what it is to be the victim of race hatred, but we “white” Americans do. We know where it’s not SAFE.
Is segregation good or bad? If bad, why do blacks practice it voluntarily? Are they racist? If so, is that bad or good? Could it be that it helps them get through life, to see others as enemies, rather than their own sorry selves who won’t study or perform?
Really appreciate you sharing this post.Really thank you! Will read on…