• Doomsider@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    So you think that leftists only pay a lip service to equality? That is a valid criticism given by leftists themselves.

    It is important to keep in mind it was the progressives, which includes liberals and leftists, who are the ones responsible for desegregation and just about every other social justice issue in our modern times.

    They did not do it by force either. They convinced people and used their social currency to cause voluntary change in the hearts and minds of people as well as policies in the government.

    In the US, trying to lay the blame on them for family separation and caging children is pretty far fetched. Did they play some small part in it? Probably.

    It was not their policy and to be frank they would have never had to take a centrist position if the conservatives did not try to make it into a political issue in the first place. Conservatives have used their grievance culture of hate to turn people against each other for far too long.

    So Kwane Ture’s biggest criticism is the liberals don’t try hard enough? That because they don’t tear the institution down they are just as bad as the oppressors. That because they see it is wrong and try to make a change that they are actually taking power away from the oppressed.

    This is all a common criticism in the vein of Malcom X and many before and after him. It of course ignores that the progressives are actually made up from the oppressed. That everything we consider part of what makes life livable nowadays is because of progressives.

    We would already have cheap or universal healthcare, equality of the sexes, elimination of discrimination, reformation of policing, living wages, free education, and a slew of other amenities if the conservatives did not decide to turn all these issues partisan.

    The fact that the Democratic party marched to the right is the response of 60+ years of hateful propaganda spewed from the conservatives to divide our populace. They are the ones responsible for dragging the country right.

    Having said all that I do agree with his sentiment. The progressives have grown complacent. We still don’t have a equal rights amendment added to our constitution. We won’t protect the rights of 50% of our society. As a man with four daughters it is very disheartening.

    • anticolonialist@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      liberals and leftists, who are the ones responsible for desegregation and just about every other social justice issue in our modern times.

      Letter from a Birmingham jail has entered the chat,

      I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

      One of the men at the head of the civil rights movement tends to disagree with you. If liberals were among those that were fighting for desegregation in every other social justice issue of our modern times, this scathing review of white moderate liberals would not have been necessary. And if that were true, After the Civil Rights laws were passed, he would have still had an overwhelming approval rating, his approval rating amongst liberals was less than 25%.

      • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        As I already alluded to this is a common criticism still being made by liberals about their own movement today. Not sure who you are trying to convince as I think it is mostly true.

        Martin Luther King won out over his more radical race war baiting counterparts. Was peace and goodwill the best way to move civil rights forward? I think it probably was but it will never make everyone happy, particularly those who had nothing to gain and had already lost everything.

        Also please show me the movement that is doing what the liberals could not. Things are better than they have ever been before. But that does not mean they can’t get worse or shouldn’t be better than they are.