When the leaders of the civil rights movement adopted the
tactics of Mahatma Gandhi our world changed. In1960 and 1961 many thoughtful
whites believed that blacks would eventually win their place at the table, but
it would take time and patience.
It took civil disobedience, and the response to sit-ins that
moved both Kennedy and the country to the realization that blacks were getting
treated as things that belonged in the back of the bus, and the time for change
was now.
We have now, as a country, moved away from some forms of discrimination;
lynching of blacks rarely occurs. Unfortunately, we have added a sanctified
form of an economic caste system. Western history is replete with comparable
mass exploitation, some less cruel then others, but all with the same goal; “I
wish to be pharaoh”. Times have
been worse, but without a Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela it is
hard to see a path to a Citizen government.
No comments:
Post a Comment