Leaderboard

The 1960s was a watershed moment that forced the United States to deal with its disenfranchised folks. Civil rights for AfroAmericans. Equal rights for White women. Calm down rebellious White folks (sex, drugs and rock & roll, antiwar protestors, etc.). The strongest AfroAmerican voices were assassinated. We haven't had a voice like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in over 50 years now. Voting rights and affirmative action were supposed to be some kind of panacea providing AfroAmericans with equal representation politically and quotas in the education and job markets. During the 1970s, AfroAmerican communities were flooded with heroin. Meanwhile, many of those former hippies only had to cut their hair and put on casual clothes and they were absorbed into affordable higher education and well paying jobs. During the 1980s, POTUS Ronald Reagan created opportunities that provided White folks with a windfall of cash. AfroAmerican communities were flooded with more drugs in the form of crack cocaine. During the 1990s, POTUS Bill Clinton stamped mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for drug offenses disproportionately affecting AfroAmericans. The prison industrial complex sprawled into big business. America definitely looks different than it did back in the 1960s. The middle class of America has been expanded and anesthetized with gross consumerism. Yet, racism and socioeconomic problems remain unchanged. Now, Americans are being pitted against each other....Folks on the Right feel their sense of entitlement is being infringed upon. Folks on the Left believe a few handouts and benign neglect will make the real problems disappear. Overall, under the system of racism white supremacy, it's just a different generation of folks executing the same old plays. The promissory note of Dr. King's dream is still a bad check for many folks.😎

Han is the ethnicity of mainstream Chinese. They are the vast majority in China. They speak Mandarin mostly, yes. During the Great Leap Forward especially, minority non-Han people were abused. There were cases of ethnic Korean teachers being pulled out of schools and thrown brutally into the streets for speaking and teaching in Korean. For those in the South., such as in the province of Yunan, things can get quite racist. And then there's Tibet... very sad.

Dreamer that he was, MLK believed that integration was what would dispel racism and usher in a new era pf brotherhood. Similarly, hippies thought universal love was the answer. So much for idealism.

As mentioned in another thread, there are countries on the planet that are pretty much utopian. Those countries have something in common...homogenous. While there may be minorities living there, they know the deal. IMO, the United States as a melting pot is a blessing and a curse because it has failed to deal with its original sin. Despite its flaws, millions of people thrived and survived in the imperfect union that is the United States. It's not impossible. But, there's no reason for it to be hard either. Unfortunately, the system of racism white supremacy and human greed makes life in the United States less utopian. The amount of money the US prints, er, spends on defense and aborted space missions and other irrelevant sh8t could improve life for millions of people. 😎

I was 13. I was a white kid in the suburbs. I liked what Dr. King was doing. My parents did not. What they called "rebellion" on my part had already begun to split us apart. I liked the musicians who played there. I liked the black celebs. And Dr. King made such total sense that his words cut to the center of my adolescent brain. A few months later John Kennedy was murdered. I stood lined up for P.E. in Jr. High in Los Angeles listening to the loudspeakers telling us that the President was dead. The naive belief in our perfect country and great world which they'd inculcated in us in school, that was fading as I woke up to the ambient racism, the hypocrisy... well, this was only the beginning. In 1968, a few months after Dr. King was gunned down. so also was Robert Kennedy. By then Malcolm had also been murdered. That year I graduated high school and stepped out into a revolution, We thought the country was being torn apart. We knew that we had to change it, that in its existing form it was not viable nor worth fighting for. There were a lot of young whites like me resonating positively to Dr. King's message and struggle. We wanted to do something. Now I'm 72. And I want to do something. It is far less clear just what one should do at this point! We do not have a great moral voice like Dr. King informing us. We all know what is wrong... but we'll be lucky if the country has any time to do much of anything but combat the forces of fascism and dictatorship which are gathering and looming on the horizon. I felt that the various ethnic groups involved in this struggle back then were pulling together. We were uniting, getting to know each other. That unity is not as great now, there are many voices of division from right and left. The innocence we had then is gone. Now we're cynical and distrustful of nearly everyone. Shoot, I'd get up and give a speech, and it would be a good one, but nobody will listen. Sometimes I feel sorry for younger people who did not experience what we did in the 60s. Much of it was very bad, but the solidarity, the feeling that we would win, the fervor we had for justice... it was great. Things are going to change. and rapidly, as we move forward. Let's all keep the positive motivation strong in us as we continue to struggle for change. If anyone thought the 60s was a mess, you ain't seen nothing yet!

I remember this momentous event well, just like it was yesterday. I had 3 young children when the March of Washington took place, and was not able to make the trip, but I did gather with a group of friends to watch it on TV and shed tears when MLK gave his famous "I have a dream" speech. Now, MLK and all of those friends have passed on, and I am left to contemplate how King's dream played out...

This sounds like the spew currently being emitted by every Republican traitor in Congress! Banana republic? We have the rule of law here, and Trump is a criminal. I've lived in one of those "banana republics" and it is not like this. How would Trump know, as he couldn't find any of them on a map. Trump is a megalomaniac traitor, a racist, misogynist, grifter, con-man, traitor... he fights for only himself. Defund the Police, is that what you're saying? How amusing to hear that coming from Trumpoid traitors. Y'all really are too fogged up to even notice how ludicrous is your every pronouncement. Russian collusion was no hoax. Members of Trump's team were meeting with Russian dirty-tricksters. Clearly Trump was working for Putin, as he defended him and met secretly with him. His actions served Putin's interests consistently. And, oh yeah, lest we forget, Trump attempted an insurrection to overthrow an election and install himself as dictator. And that's ok with his supporters, every one of them thereby a TRAITOR. That's the word for it: TRAITOR. Move to Russia now.