Sometimes I am absolutely gobsmacked by some of the things I read here.
On a site that likes to bill itself as reality based and whose members often lay claim to being dedicated to Liberal and Progressive values, there are, from time to time, some spectacular displays of which stupendously ignorant would be the most charitable description.
Most of the time I’d limit myself to just commenting on such but there are some misstatements that are so egregious, so at odds with fact, so corrosive to elementary principles of solidarity, that they require a fuller response.
I ran across one such just the other day. A Kossack made the claim that there were no white men at Selma, at least none on the heroic side.
That assertion is simply false, as the photo above demonstrates.
What’s disturbing about this isn’t just that it is false but that it was apparently part of a larger claim. One that denies that white men have any place in a Progressive narrative of US history, at least as it regards the Civil Rights struggle.
This claim is not only false as a matter of history but one actively destructive to the project of racial and social justice.
I could here give a long list of white men who chose to stand on the right side of the Civil Rights struggle but fortunately there is a better way to correct this false narrative.
The Civil Rights Movement Veterans website provides a photographic record of those who were a part of the struggle. It gives a compelling visual refutation surpassing anything I might write. I’m including just a small sample below but I encourage anyone interested in this history to pay a visit to the site.
Let me state plainly that the history of the Civil Rights Movement isn’t the story of the white people who were involved, much less the story of the white men involved but they are a part of the story. Denying their involvement amounts to falsifying and disrespecting that history.
Tuesday, Mar 28, 2017 · 6:58:48 PM +00:00
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WB Reeves
Debating this diary in the comments below, I’ve been struck by the similarities to past debates with members of various ideologically driven political sects.
As in those instances, it appears that there is a great deal of talking at cross purposes. This because while both sides may use identical words, it’s apparent that they attach very different meanings to them. This is most evident in the use of the phrase “The WhiteMan”. For one side it appears to be understood as a theoretical construct, identifying the “dominant power structure of the time”. For the other, it has the more generic meaning of identifying any and all males classed as white.
Now either one of these usages can be valid. However, it’s pretty clear that the second is the most common usage. The first is a specialized usage utilized for political and academic theory.
Obviously, when using it in the first sense, if you do not specify that you doing so, you are certain to be misunderstood.
That’s what appears to be going on here. One group embraces the theoretical meaning of the term and acts as though everyone does so. The other is operating off the common usage an interprets the term accordingly.
Neither side is “wrong” here, except in the failure of due diligence to assure that they’re communicating effectively.