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Thread: Well done Barack Obama - how long before racism is a dinosaur?

  1. #61
    Registered User John S's Avatar
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    Re: Well done Barack Obama - how long before racism is a dinosaur?

    For those who want to throw statistics about, HERE is a whole beanfeast of them in respect of how Americans voted. (OK, it's only a survey, but it rings true.)

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    Registered User John S's Avatar
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    Re: Well done Barack Obama - how long before racism is a dinosaur?

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    Didn't Kennedy promise to ratify the voting rights for black people, so the Civil Rights Movement would not be needed?

    John S will know more than me. I think Kennedy took about 8 months to get around to it when he became President.

    Not sure of my qualification as the Forum authority on American history, but here goes!

    My memory is that John Kennedy was probably disposed intellectually to support the civil rights movment (remember, he was the first Roman Catholic to become president, so he knew what it was like to be from a disadvantaged minority - albeit in his case there was plenty of family money to soften the blow!) However, he was above all else a politician, and in 1957 he voted against Eisenhower's setting up of the Civil Rights Commission because doing so enhanced his chances of becoming the Democratic candidate for president in 1960.

    Once he was the Democratic candidate he campaigned in favour of the civil rights movement, probably calculating that he needed the black vote, which was correct - he only beat Nixon by a whisker.

    But when he became president he was immediately faced with international crises (Berlin, Cuba) and because the advancement of civil rights wasn't seen as a vote-winner he didn't do much about it for a while - in fact he opposed the Freedom Rides! Also, his brother Robert Kennedy (as Attorney General) advised that it was a state matter, not a federal one, which got the Kennedys off the hook.

    I think it was really the media attention to the problems in Mississippi and Alabama that produced the groundswell of public opinion against white supremacy and gave the Kennedys the backbone to begin to force change through towards the end of what JFK reckoned would be his first term in office, and at the time of his death he was pushing a Civil Rights Bill through Congress - it was eventually passed under Lyndon Johnson's presidency.

    Did he believe in integration and equal rights? Probably.
    Was he prepared to sacrifice his political aspirations to deliver them? Almost certainly not!

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    Re: Well done Barack Obama - how long before racism is a dinosaur?

    It seems the Klu Klux Klan is alive and well.

    Apparently a woman in America had joind the KKK over the Internet.

    She then changed her mind and wanted to end her membership - but the KKK murdered her!

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    Re: Well done Barack Obama - how long before racism is a dinosaur?

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    The first black president of the USA.

    The USA is more racist than the UK.

    Is racism set to become a distant nasty memory?

    I think that may depend on your terms of reference. I suspect you are thinking only of the Western world. As far as I can tell it is fairly widespread in the rest of the world and shows little sign of shrinking.

    I was hearing recently about how tough it is to being asiatic in certain african countries. At least in the west there are positive efforts being made to reduce it that are evidently having some success. Although the election in the USA was supposed to be about policies and not race it is strange how much exposure the issue of race has had.

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    Re: Well done Barack Obama - how long before racism is a dinosaur?

    Quote Originally Posted by Hagen View Post
    I think that may depend on your terms of reference. I suspect you are thinking only of the Western world. As far as I can tell it is fairly widespread in the rest of the world and shows little sign of shrinking.

    I was hearing recently about how tough it is to being asiatic in certain african countries.
    Amnesty say there are more slaves today than there have ever been, all across the world including the UK.

    The most talked about in the media are the female sex slaves from Eastern Europe, tricked into coming to the UK for a bona fide job, but held as prisioners by sex slave bosses.

    Two bosses in London have just been jailed.
    It seems the police are doing something about it.

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