Saturday, June 20, 2020

I say BS to this elitist viewpoint which just happens to be way over the top in the PC arena

A tipping point on ending racism, an opportunity to get things right, yea, yea, yea. But what about the black on black crime, the black genocide aka abortion, it's peculiar that the elite don't like to talk about any of that. I have a feeling they don't want to embrace anything black, at least up close.
SNEED: After my more than 50 years in journalism, and 70-plus years as an American, change has been a long time coming. Now, let’s embrace it.


By Michael Sneed Jun 19, 2020, 3:51pm CDT

A woman protests during a rally June 16 in Victorville, California, over the death of Malcolm Harsch, a black man who was found hanging from a tree on May 31 near Victorville. Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images

Our country has now been placed on notice.

If fire is to come, let it only be in our hearts.

The stunningly inhumane killing of George Floyd — still on everyone’s mind weeks after a white police officer suffocated Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis — seems to be achieving what President Abraham Lincoln once claimed was everything: public sentiment.

I can tell you this: After my more than 50 years in journalism, and 70-plus years as an American, change has been a long time coming. Let’s hope it’s finally here.

A quick trip back in time; a previous look at the nightmare of systemic racism.

People of color on the North Dakota prairie of my youth were the Mandan, Sioux, and Arikara.

They lived apart, in poverty, on reservations where European immigrant families like mine did not visit. They were always the bad guys in “Cowboys and Indians” movies that were so popular at the time. My mother told stories of the Mandan begging for money at the railroad station when she was young. “They were so poor,” she said. “It was so sad.”

When my young parents moved us to Portland, Oregon, where Dad attended college on the G.I. Bill after World War II, I opened a lemonade stand when I was in first grade.

After I sold a glass of lemonade to an African American man outside our home, an outraged white male neighbor went ballistic.

You can guess the drill. I was a flummoxed and terrified little kid. The neighbor insisted the glass be scrubbed in lye. My dad scrubbed him instead.

Flash forward to 1965, when I was graduating from Wayne State University in Detroit.

A Detroit civil rights advocate named Viola Liuzzo traveled to Selma, Alabama, to march and help the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s effort to register African American voters. While driving a black demonstrator back to Montgomery, Liuzzo was murdered by a group of Ku Klux Klansmen, becoming the only known white female killed during the Civil Rights Movement.

How many of us still remember her name?Michael Sneed covering a protest in 1968 File photo

As a young Chicago City News Bureau reporter morphing into a Chicago Tribune journalist in 1968 and 1969, I saw firsthand how inequity breeds contempt.

Whether it was reporting on anti-Vietnam War protests; covering the 1968 Democratic National Convention in which cops bloodied protesters with billy clubs, and getting pepper-sprayed myself while covering the 1972 Republican convention in Miami, I’ve had a front-row seat to unrest akin to what was unfolding on our living room televisions during the last weekend in May and in early June.

If watching that brought all these memories back for me — a grandmother now living in suburban quiet — I can only imagine what it did to those who are subjected to institutional racism daily.

Our country’s battle against racism is not going to be easy; it’s written into a history that might now be in the process of a rewrite — and forward movement.

And we now have a battalion of recently elected (or appointed) Black leaders in position to effect change, many of them elected citywide, countywide and statewide by racially and philosophically diverse groups of voters.

So to . . .

• Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot

• Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle

• Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul

• Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx

• Chief Judge of the Cook County Circuit Court Timothy Evans

• Senate Majority leader Kimberly Lightford

• Illinois Lieutenant Gov. Juliana Stratton

• Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White

• Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County Dorothy Brown

• Cook County Clerk Karen A. Yarbrough

• Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin

• Chicago Police Supt. David Brown

• Chicago Fire Department Commissioner Richard Ford

• Chicago Police Board President Ghian Foreman

• Chicago Transit Authority President Dorval Carter

• Chicago Public Schools CEO Dr. Janice Jackson

• Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority CEO Larita Clark

• Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Water Management Randy Conner

• and the bevy of Chicago aldermen, as well as state representatives and senators and U.S. House members

. . . here’s hoping we will all come together to do what’s right.

I’m not naive enough to think we’ll turn it around in my lifetime, but all of you give me hope for my grandson’s.
This is an incredibly condescending column. What has this suburban dwelling, journalist done to ease racial tensions in her 70 plus years? Now she talks of her hope that everyone begin to embrace her version of change? I think not. It's just more of the same window-dressing. 

She and others like her, should volunteer in a soup kitchen, help out in one of the after-school programs that need volunteers or even mentor a black child. Imagine the good that could be accomplished if everyone tried one of these acts, just once a month. 

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous6/20/2020

    Blah, blah, blah. Saw a bunch of demonstrators/protesters yesterday afternoon at 103rd and Western. On each corner, caucasian hipsters held their BLM signs. As I made the turn to go north on Western, an older protester held a "F*** 12" sign. It was too much for me. I rolled the window down and told this particular person to go EFF himself.
    Im all for fairness and equality, but I also realize African Americans comprise 13% of our country's population. Neither I, nor any ancestor of mine, owned another person, slave, or otherwise. So when the Caucus in the City council tries to lay this reparations trip on me, I say EFF them too.

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  2. Anonymous6/20/2020

    Black dont get abortions thanks to the Great Society Programs.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous6/22/2020

      Millions of Black babies have been aborted. This may actually have been the intended consequence of the legalization of abortion in this country by abortion proponents.

      Delete
  3. Anonymous6/20/2020

    How much ammo do you have??

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  4. Hi murph. None of the liberal journalists care about Black Genocide and Black on Black Crime. None live near a Black community either. ಠ︵ಠ

    With COVID-19 still lurking, videos of riots and loots online and possibility of being called racist or pedo, some or most Whites are going to think twice about helping or mentoring Black kids, moving into to a Black or integrated community and/or being involved with Blacks as friends or co-workers. ಠ_ಠ

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  5. It doesn't really matter that the elected leaders are Black. Unfortunately, they suck, like their predecessors did. ಠ︵ಠ

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