Savant's Great Words

Muslim & Christian Slave trades Probably the mortality rate in the Atlantic slave trade was greater than the4 10% indicated by Wrong. Bu the bottom line is that MILLIONS of African lives were lost to both the Muslim and Christian slave trades. However, we're supposed to be taling about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -Savant
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 With regard to Haiti, you finally make correct observations. The economic retributions against Haiti by both France and the USA played a pivotal role in the impoverishment of the country. However, this is not to deny the corrupt leadership one also found there. But there has been a bit of research on how Haiti was punished, economically sabotaged for the crime of launching the only successful slave revolt in history. Toussaint l'Ouverture ought to be at least as familiar a name as Spartacus.
 -Savant

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There is no lazy Black population in Haiti, and there's no nation known to man in which the population as a whole does little or nothing more than smoke pot. As for Dr. King's dream, which is invoked more readily than understood or examined, it consisted of a lot more than some vision of "the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners" sitting together at the table of brotherhood. If you examine King's thought in some depth you will see that it involved something more than just desegregations. It also involved an idea of a cooperative economic commonwealth and a community and nation governed by a "person-orien ted" value system rather than a "thing-orient ed" value system. It involved the ending of both class and race injustices and divisions. It entailed economic democracy as well as political democracy; and it involved a moving away from that deeply held American prejudice in favor of "rugged individualism. " For King there is no "I" with out "thou." Or as King put it in WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE, "The self cannot be a self without other selves...All men are interdependent. " His visionis that of "person-in-co mmunity" to use the words of Rfus Burrows. And the ultimate aim of King was the "beloved community." Black people didn't destroy the dream of Dr. King. American simply failed to live up to the noble vision of King. She has yet to prove to be equal to the radical vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 -Savant

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 It is important to understand that for King desegregation--whi ch he distinguishes from integration--is not the ultimate aim. His aim is a new social order--Ultimately, the end is "the creation of the beloved community." This entails a "mutually cooperative and voluntary venture." While it does involved the transcendence of capitalism, of possessive individualism while leaning toward a cooperative society, it must not be confused with what people normally think of when they speak of "communism " (as in the USSR, etc). It is not a coercive collectivism, which is actually irrelevant to community if not the actual negation of it. When King speak of a "voluntary and cooperative venture," he means precisely that. No commissars, no bureaucrats, and no Wall Street pirates. A cooperative society, a free association in which the human person in relations with his/her fellows is able to flourish as human personalities. The attack on segregation was a step in that direction, but not final aim. One might say that desegregation is a negative good, i.e., the removal of an evil. The achievement of a positive good entails a fuller transformation of society and a "revolution of values."

 -Savant

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 There's something which some scholars call "code shifting." Some Black people can shift with real with relative ease from very cultured or academic uses of language to the use of the patois. One can observe both Malcolm X and Martin King doing this many times.

 -Savant

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 I'd add Clarence Thomas. Jesse Jackson did have a record of civil rights activism at a time when it could have cost him his life. But he's not doing much now. Roy Innis was once active at some level in the struggle, but that was a long time ago. Al Sharpton I've got suspicions about. Not sure. There's rumors that he was down with COINTELPRO. If so, he's an enemy of the people. If not, then he's another activist. Sometimes useful, sometimes not. Problem is, he's an apologist for Barack Obama. Even if Obama had been as progressive as his early supporters believed (or hoped), uncritical support is always a bad thing. 

-Savant

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 Most information regarding violent crimes like assault, homicide or rape seem to indicate that women ARE less violent than we are. Of course, most men do not commit homicides, but most homicides are committed by men. And this seems to be the case no matter the race, color, creed, etc. Reportedly, about 90% of homicides are committed by men, and most of them against other men. And since most political and economic power even today is exercised by men, men may be considered the ones most responsible for the mass carnage of wars Yet women are capable of violence. They can and sometimes do commit homicide, assault and rape. Why is it that they do so less often than men? Is it "nature" or "nurture "? Not all females are sugar and spice. Are women "by nature" a gentler sex? Or are they just socialized to be less inclined than men to resort to violence? Could it be that violence is culturally less a part of the definition of womanhood? Would women be no less violent than men if they had equal amounts of power and were not so differently socialized?

-Savant

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 Barack Obama's use of "proper" English hasn't made him less popular. During the days of the Movement Dr. King, Malcolm X, and Angela Davis weren't made less popular among the masses by the use of good diction and correct grammar. When the articulate Black man or woman becomes unpopular among the masses t's usually due to something deeper than grammar and semantics. Of course, for women to start wars they'd have to have power. But patriarchy has been dominant for at least the past 4000 years. Would women start more wars if they had the power? The USA economically reconstructed Japan as well as Europe. There was no Marshall Plan for Haiti. Only economic reprisals.

 -Savant

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 I've read more Nkrumah than you've read King. In my book on King I point out that King was a Christian and democratic socialist, but not a socialist theoretician. His commitment to socialism (which he sometimes calls "fully realized democracy") was more ethical than theoretical. I discerned that from his works and the works of a number of King scholars. Tell me something I don't know. King spoke many words besides those soken on August 28, 1963. If you've no access to the King Papers, atleast read the collection entitled A TESTAMENT OF HOPE. Most of what you called Gandhism is actually Personalism, both the "homespun African American Personalsim as Rufus Burrows, Jr. calls it, and the systematic Personalism studied by King at Boston University. But Personalism with its idea of the inherent dignity of personality does coincide with many ideas of Gandhi. King repeatedly critiques rugged individualism in STRIDE TOWARD FREEDOM (his first book), STRENGTH TO LOVE, and WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE, CHAOS OR COMMUNITY. King's critique of collectivism may receive more attention, and his critique of Communism gets let attention than his critique of capitalism. but critique them he did.

 -Savant