Savant on Issues in January 2015

Try writing that again in coherent English. As for "cherry picking", I've actually done considerable research on the thought of Dr. King, research involving in examination of volumes of the King Papers project as work of King scholars like Clayborne Carson, Lewis Baldwin, Rufus Burrows, Jr., John Ansbro, Taylor Branch and numerous others-- even some of Dr. King's professors. I've even had correspondence with Branch and Clayborne. And my published work on King seems to be favorably reviewed by King scholars in the areas of Philosophy and Theology (king's own area of study). They don't find no cherry picking in my work, but it is now almost laughable among them that some right wing white simpleton will quote that "content of character" phrase to support precisely what King didn't support, or even opposed. Of course, you've a right to your opinion. But if you wish to debate me on King, then you'd better do homework, and maybe start with A TESTAMENT OF HOPE and THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING , JR.. A little background in philosophy wouldn't hurt. But do read slowly as you seem to have a problem with reading comprehension. But until you've done some homework I'll thank you to leave your silly white arrogance to yourself.

-Savant

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POLICE MISCONDUCT IN LA Someone just forwarded to me information on more cop misconduct. From the April 8, 2014 edition of the "Atlanta Black Star", it is reported that Los Angeles police officers have been removing attennas from police cars in Black neighborhoods to disable recording devices. What are they trying to hide? If you're on the up and up you've no need to conceal what you're doing. You scoundrels!

-Savant

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I must read N'diaye. I've heard of him but not read him. Beacoups des blancs Americains--en effet a Topix-- m'a dit que le terreur contre les Noirs n'existe pas, que the oppression par la police est un illusion. So, if 75%--80% des Noirs American dit que "we are subject to police brutality and injustice in the courts", we're all just imagining this. I wasn't REALLY almost killed by cops at age 17 in Johnson Square (armed with such dangerous weapons as History book and a copy of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. Hey, they were just kidding when they pointed those loaded rifles and guns. And if I had been shot then my books would not have really been books but a loaded Saturday night special. Or maybe the cops would have mistaken my books for a gun they way they mistook Juwan McGee's pen for a pistol. After all, if the cops "believed " his life was in danger then they were justified in mistaking my books for a gun, and me (a teenager) for a 35 year old dude who supposedly stuck up a bar. Or like Tamir Rice, the 12 year old who they thought was twenty, and whose toy they mistook for a real gun. Qulequefois, les etrangers comprehend le racism Americain plus que les Americains. Votre compatriot Jean-Paul Sartre a ecrit a NOTEBOOKS FOR AN ETHICS (CAHIERS POUR UNE MORALE) que l'oppression des Noirs Americain est organized and institutionalized. What is often obvious to a discerning person from abroad is incomprehensible to peoplewith whom we lived in this land for over 350 years!!!

-Savant

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At least this post is more coherent and intelligible. But it reveals the same common oversimplified conception of what King was about. Let me suggest that you read Chapter 8 of Dr. King['s book WHY WE CAN'T WAIT, published in 1964 after the victory in Birmingham. His arguments are too detailed to lay out adequately in this place. But King speaks clearly of the need for COMPENSATORY action to rectify the accumulated damage of centuries, and is under no illusion that civil rights laws and formal legal equality would eradicate the accumulated institutional inequalities of this society. In section III of Chapter 8, King writes "Among the many jobs to be done, the nation must not only radically readjust its attitude to the Negro in the compelling present, but most incorporate in its planning some COMPENSATORY consideration for the handicaps he inherited from the past. It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special AGAINST the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special FOR him now, in order the balance the equation and equip him to compete on a just and equal basis. Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line of a race three hundred years after the other man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner" (p. 124). There's more to King's argument in that chapter, including an analogy to the measures taken by the newly independent government of India on behalf of its untouchables, measures that involved "compensatory consideration ". King's argument is made more strongly in his 1967 work, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY, in which he brings up the argument again for compensatory and preferential options, including now class as well as racial considerations. Naturally, I cannot go through all that in such short space. But people ought to study King's thinking on these matters rather than cherry picking phrases extracted from the whole of his analysis. And people need to learn what his idea of the Poor Peoples Campaign was all about.  


-Savant