The man black history erased

[Pix]

Thought I'd share now before I forget...

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/21/opinion/gr...index.html

Rustin was imprisoned for challenging racial segregation in the South before the phrase "Freedom Rider" was ever said. He taught a 25-year-old King the true meaning of nonviolent civil disobedience while the great dreamer was still being flanked by armed bodyguards. And before addressing the crowd of 250,000 that gathered at the National Mall nearly five decades ago, famed actor and activist Ossie Davis introduced him "as the man who organized this whole thing."

No, the reason why you probably have not heard of Bayard Rustin has nothing to do with the significance of his contributions to the March on Washington or the civil rights movement in general. His absence is epitomized by the sentiment woven between the lines of that joke between Jones and Rustin's protege. You see, the organizer of the great march, the man who held a fundraiser at Madison Square Garden to help fund the bus boycott in Montgomery, the intellectual behind the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Council was also unabashedly gay. And it was the discomfort some had with his sexuality that led to his disappearance in our history books.

"We must look back with sadness at the barriers of bigotry built around his sexuality," wrote NAACP chairman emeritus Julian Bond in "I Must Resist," a collection of Rustin letters. "We are the poorer for it."

You see as big and as looming and as destructive as racism has been and continues to be in society, we must remember it is only a branch.

The root of the problem, the reason why we continue to struggle with equality, is our pathological intolerance, an intolerance no collective group of people has proven to be immune to.

"I say to you today, my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today, and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"

Dr. King's dream has not been fulfilled because we began betraying the integrity of his dream the moment we started scrubbing Rustin's life out of Black History Month lessons and civil rights movies.

We betray that dream each time a black person claims offense to the notion that gay rights are civil rights, as if the black community is the only community capable of being oppressed.

We betray King's dream each time a white elected official is allowed to say things about the gay community in ways that would never be tolerated if directed at the black community.

I don't say these things because I view the history and plight of these two minority groups as being exactly the same -- they are not.

I say these things because racism and homophobia -- like anti-Semitism, sexism and xenophobia -- all have the same mother. And as long as concessions are made for one, we will never be free from the clutches of the others.

More:

http://www.pbs.org/outofthepast/past/p4/rustin.html

[pellaz]

the US moves slow on almost anything:
-are we all so bad at math; why is it we never converted to the metirc system
-why is it abortion is still being discussed
-health care, like most developed nations dont already have it

it seems nothing ever gets resolved, just put off to endless bitching and complaining.

[pellaz]

make clear some of my thinking:
no fuss, no muss, the UK recently enabled same sex marriage.
Only an incremental change and lives go on. Maybe that is why this government has survived so much.