• anticolonialist@lemmy.world
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    3 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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      3 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.