Leonard Pitts: This is who `we' really is, Glenn

[RamboLiberal]

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But even by those standards, Glenn Beck's effrontery is monumental. Even by those standards, he goes too far. Beck was part of the ``we'' who founded the civil rights movement!? No. Here's who ``we'' is.

``We'' is Emmett Till, tied to a cotton gin fan in the murky waters of the Tallahatchie River. ``We'' is Rosa Parks telling the bus driver no. ``We'' is Diane Nash on a sleepless night waiting for missing Freedom Riders to check in. ``We'' is Charles Sherrod, husband of Shirley, gingerly testing desegregation compliance in an Albany, Ga., bus station. ``We'' is a sharecropper making his X on a form held by a white college student from the North. ``We'' is celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando and Pernell Roberts of Bonanza, lending their names, their wealth and their labor to the cause of freedom.

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The we to which Glenn Beck belongs is the we that said no, the we that cried ``socialism!'' ``communism!'' ``tyranny!'' whenever black people and their allies cried freedom.

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This, then, is to serve notice as Beck and his tea party faithful gather in Lincoln's shadow to claim the mantle of King: Some of us are not ignorant. Some of us remember. Some of us know very well who ``we'' is.

And, who ``we'' is not.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/25/1790858/this-is-who-we-really-is-glenn.html#ixzz0xqBIIsgo

[mike r]

1. Glenn Beck is cheapening the memory of the civil rights movement

If there's any 'usurpation' or 'sacrilege' going on, it's Glenn Beck.

[Skittles]

7. he doesn't have the power to do that

he and his lapdog fans are making fools of themselves

[yurbud]

8. that is the way I have always felt about racial slurs: the people using them hurts themselves

in the estimation of decent people, and it only hurts the target of the slur if the person slurring has the power to harm the target (like a boss, cop, or someone at the head of a lynch mob). When those instances used to be more common than not, it was natural for those insulted to have an extreme reaction--it was a survival instinct.

As fewer and fewer people with racist views or who take obviously racist actions are in power, the reaction will be less common, and more frequently, the targets will think of those insulting them as merely pathetic.

[Skittles]

9. that is correct

I've always wondered if some black/brown folk feel that "amongst ourselves" it is standard to run down minorities, because it absolutely is not - I don't do it, and neither do my coworkers and friends. We absolutely think poorly of those who do.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Bravo to Leonard Pitts. Great article.

And damn all to hell Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann and all their old white scared teabagger fellow travelers and dittoheads for pissing on the grave of MLK and defiling the memory of the civil rights movement.

[Suich]

3. I read that in the Seattle Times this morning.

Excellent article!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Blue_Tires]

4. kick

[pscot]

5. Glen Beck is a Grave Robber

I love Leonard Pitts.

[RoseMead]

6. K&R

:kick: for history.