It's called A TESTAMENT OF HOPE. Sorry for the incorrect spelling. I don't know of a better collection of the writings and speeches of Dr. King, unless you can afford that seven volume set of KING PAPERS published by the King Papers Project in U of C.
How ironic. Barros says that race and racism were creations of European imperialists as part of their rationalization for the oppression of peoples of color. And there are a number of historians who will testify that this claim (even though there's more to it than rationalization) is essentially CORRECT. Jermaine says that race is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT of European society. And as someone who has studied, and written and published in the area called "Critical Race theory," I can assure you that numerous thinkers (philosophers, historians, cultural theorists, sociologists, etc) would also say that this is CORRECT. Moreover, I actually agree with BOTH of you on that point---and wonder why you don't realized that (with different styles and points of emphasis) you both actually making the SAME POINT! In fact, this is what separates you both from white racists ideologues and black racial essentialists.
At least at this stage you are. Yet the acrimonious exchange continues even when the points of disagreement are negligible if not imaginary.
Meanwhile, what has happened to the discussion of NONVIOLENT REVOLUTION?
But since we're talking (or trying to) about NONVIOLENT REVOLUTION, you might like to look at the address "Ethical Imperatives of Integration" by Dr. King which can be found in A TERSTAMENT OF HOPE. There he notes that already in the early 1960s, anthropologists were abandoning those old racial categories (Negroid, Causasoid, Mongoloid) and even abandoning the concept of RACE altogether as a scientific concept. In the EARLY SIXTIES. And now, we learn that genetics destroys on biological grounds what social scientists began demolishing decades earlier.
From this King infers the ONENESS and EQUALITY of the human family--a family and community which he would not wish to tear asunder with violence and oppression. NONVIOLENT REVOLUTION?
-Savant
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Barros may use inflammatory language, but it's a fact that Latinos in parts of the country west of the Mississippi were treated as bad as he says, and sometimes worst. Indeed, there were lynchings of Mexican-Americans; and though no two situations are exactly alike, in some parts of the country where there were more Mexicans than Blacks, Mexicans received treatment similar to wha was inflicted to my people elsewhere. Sorry, but that's a fact of history.
All I know, you insane person, is that in north Texas they went to school with White people and were in extra curricular activities school activities with White people, had stores of various kinds that White people went to, were physicians that White people went to- at least since the 1950s when at that time there were a couple of them in the area, had their own farms and dairies, restaurants from as far back as the 1940s that White people went to, etc. I could scan school pictures from the 1930s and 1940s that show a few (because only a few lived in the area) Mestizo children with names like Trevino and Morales scattered in with White children at the public schools, but I don't feel the need to prove anything to you. These people were not relegated to only picking fruit and didn't need a movement. Not here. I KNOW A NUMBER OF THEM PERSONALLY.
IT's a part of HISTORY regardless of whether it's a part of your personal experience. While I don't know Latiho History (though studying it) as well as I know the history of the black experience America, a RED FLAG goes up when I hear a white person like you talk about how well you and the Latins got along, and that the Latins don't need a movement.
Whites (even archsegregationists)used to talk about how well they got along with my people even BEFORE the Civil Rights movement, and even in racist terror states like Mississippi. They thought we didn't need a movement either, and that those who tried to start one were agitators, commies or what have you trying to provoke an otherwise "contented" colored folk.
At any rate, the MEXICAN AMERICANS THEMSELVES apparently DID think they needed a MOVEMENT and ORGANIZED one. Moreover, I have HEARD Latins talk to me about the struggles of their people, and I think that they may have a clearer understanding of their situation than do you or most other whites.
Dr. King, by the way, was in conversation with Cesar Chavez (nonviolent leader of Latin workers) to coordinate their forces and unite our peoples for the Poor Peoples Campaign.
Later the Black Panther Party also attemped to forge links of solidarity between Latino insurgency and ours.
With regard to the needs of other people, ti would be refreshing departure if more whites would simply suspend judgment, or at least ASK what it is that oppressed minorities need rather than asserting it as if you alredy knew.
Despite the unfortunate tensions one often finds between Blacks and Latinos, I've learned that one thing BOTH our groups often find so annoying with many whites is precisely their PRESUMPTUOUSNESS.
-Savant
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One point I think King was clearly rightm, and you mistaken. A nonviolent revolution--perhaps any revolution--must mean the transcendance of capitalism in America. Or it is no revolution. Some of the things--like avoiding purchase of expensive cars--may make sense whether you want a radical change in American society or not. Revolutionaries--nonviolent and violent--usualy admonish the people to break with the corrupt values of the society which they are trying to change, and to begin to create (to the extent that it is possible) a new and superior value system even while still trying to change the old society. I, for one, would advise people to abandon the corrosive values of consumerism, and the ethos of possessive individualism. Affirm the value of the human personality, and the value of even the most degraded human being over all the gold of Fort Knox.The non-violent revolution has been in progress for decades now. All to no avail. What revolution do I speak of??? The revolution of attempting to educate the ignorant masses of how the economic system of capitalism can be made to work for everyone!!! Why has this revolution failed??? Largely because of the Negro of course. The ignorant Negro has sucked the lifeblood out of the system to the point that even the campesinos and the White trashers question the system. The truth is that with a minimum of self-discipline (something the Negro is sorely lacking) every person can become a success. Here are a few simple directions.
1. Get married.
2. Stay married come hell or high water.
3. Invest in stock funds even if you have a hankering for some strange.
4. Do not buy an expensive car even if you can afford it.
5. Involve yourself in your childrens education. If you yourself are ignorant then find some swinging dick in your extended family who isn't.
But we must also overcome the system which generates corrupt and dehumanizing values, the system that led to the slave trade and modern slavery, colonialism, two world wars, and the currrent wars in the Middle East---we must rid ourselves of the scourge of global capitalism. And we should seek NONVIOLENT ways of achieving this.
But I think what you propose stops far short of that, and some of what you propose amounts mainly to better ways fo adjusting to the system.
But I gues that's to be expected. I desire a REVOLUTIONARY change in America and the world. You accept (with perhaps some modifications) the established order
-Savant
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There were Mexican-Americans protesting anti-latin racism in the 1950s & 60s! Not just people who arrived in or since the 1980s!!!!
There was Mexican and other latino groups who created movements at about the same time as the Black Movement of the 1950s & 60s even though it may have taken longer for it to get as big as the Black movement became by mid-60s. And you say that you talked to some Mexicans who told you this or that, and maybe you have. I'm not surprised that they have different opinions---as would happen if you talk to this or that Black person about one thing or another. I've often heard white say "Well I talked to these colored people and what they said was..." --which may not be what they say to EACH OTHER.
There was a MASS MOVEMENT of Mexican-Americans and other Latinos both east and west of the Mississippi. First King, andlater the Black Panthers tried to make alliances (with varying degrees of success)between our two movements, And despite the differences in history and culture of our two communities, I'm convinced that my brown compatriots revolted for the reasons similar to what provoked our revolt: we both thought the system of racism and exploitation STANK! And most of us still do. And that's the bottom line.
Also, one probably finds that more activism among Latins who are "legal", and not so vulneraable to retribution. But you simply can't create a mass movement among people who are content.
-Savant
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It wasn't popular in the beginning, and abolitonists were often subject to political retribution and mob violence.
It can easily be argued that the abolitionist movement was successful due to the fact that it occurred in your own lands and also to the various rebellions AAs started.
Problems are much more of a concern when they occur in your own backyard after all.
Our movement against Vietnam war was not successful at first, but ti became such over time.
One consequence of the 1960s was the creation of an OPPOSITIONAL CULTURE, even if weakened by the conservatism of the 1980s & 90s.
The conseravtism of the post 1960s era did not snuff out progressive opposition as happened (or nearly happened) during the McCathyist era of the 1950s.
You simply can't isolate the opposition by labeling it "anti-American" or "Communist." That simply doesn't work any more.
All the denunciations of the previous administration and the loud looney rantings of FoxNews wasn't able to break the opposition.
But we must develop new tactics because some of the older ones are not as effective as they once were.
New tactics of Nonviolent resistance ---perhaps more aggressive than those of the 1960s & early 70s--will probably have to be invented.
We must make the American people ask: Why does the government have money to finance dictators, but not decent education for our citizens? Why can we find funds to KILL people in the Middle East, but not to heal the sick or feed the hungry in America?
What new tactics of nonviolent opposition--even SOCIALLY DISRUPTIVE nonviolent action--need we to develop to move the conscience of the nation and pressure the government to devote its energies to do justice to both our citiaens at home, and our neighbors abroad?
-Savant
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AT THE RIVER I STAND!
I admit being moved by the words of the Egyption tutor: "Respect us as human beings!" It made me thing of the Memphis Sanitation Workers of 1968, and of the film about that strike: AT THE RIVER I STAND!
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that film to everyone, as well as the one I mentioned earlier about striking Mexican workers.
In AT THE RIVER I STAND, made in the 1990s, men who were involved in the Memphis strike were interviewed and the film takes us back to that momentous strike, a strike that would be the LAST campaign of Dr. King (who was increasingly tying together issues of racial justice, with poverty and war).
Black laborers were paid virtual starvation wages, with the insulting sting of racial contempt adding insult to injury.. Wnen two of them were killed on the job, they'd had enough and went strike demanding decent wages, decent working conditions, the right to organize, and just basic HUMAN RESPECT.
These impoverished, poorly educated black workers (aided by family and community) stood against the entire power structure of the city and WON!
Dr. King didn't organize that strike, which came as he was preparing for the Poor Peoples Campaign.
He was invited by old friend Rev. Jim Lawson (whom I had the pleasure to meet while at VAndy), and was so impressed by the courage of these workers that he threw in with them.
Day after day, faced with strike breakers, provocateurs, repressive police, a hostile media, the working people held firm in MILITANT but NONVIOLENT struggle. I recall oen worker confronting Mayor Loeb, and saying: "Did I insult you mayor, by speaking the truth. These men have FOUGHT for this country, and friends who DIED for this country, and all we expect is to be respected as men."
I recall seeing the placards carried by workers: "I am a MAN!" I hear this message caught the attention of the world. "I am a man" repeated Robert (1968 striker being interviewed during 90s interview), "I guess it did mean something, didn't it?"
And Dr. King's words to the sanitation workers:
"All labor has DIGNITY, but you're doing another thing. You are reminding not only Memphis, but you are reminding the NATION, that is is a CRIME for people to live in this RICH NATION and to receive STARVATION WAGES!"
-Savant
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