http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2010/0827/Glenn-Beck-rally-on-Saturday-Whose-honor-is-being-restoredGlenn Beck rally on Saturday: Whose honor is being restored?
By Gloria Goodale, Staff writer
... Roll Stewart's next Beck clip: “This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement. We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and, damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights movement … we will take that movement because we were the people who did it in the first place.”
Who, exactly, is "we" in that storm-the-ramparts statement?
White aggrievement is the subtext of that Beck trumpet call, suggests sociologist Charles Gallagher of La Salle University. “Beck is tapping into a sense of loss that permeates many sectors of society, particuarly during economic downturns.” In choosing the Martin Luther King speech anniversary, Beck also capitalizes on the notion of progress in racial equality, a theme that underlies what Professor Gallagher calls a subtle but growing sense among many on the right that whites have become the new minority, “a group that must now reclaim its own rights.”
The Fox News host is trying to "take advantage of a feeling of loss, even if not conscious ... on the part of many white people, certainly many conservative white people,” says Xavier University sociologist Jacqueline Battlaora, a former Chicago police officer. She says a large segment of the tea party movement responds to this message by pushing for its own individual rights, and adds, "and this is the group Beck is reaching out to in this weekend rally."...
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