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Rosa Parks

Pardons for Segregation Law Violators?

by La Shawn on March 21, 2006

in General

I’ve thought about writing articles (and maybe a book) in defense of the Southern Strategy, and I’m similarly inclined to write an op-ed opposing the idea of pardoning people who violated segregation laws (also see this story) back in the day.

Maybe this is why I get hate mail. After all, such ideas are “dangerous.” Whites with sinister motives may use such op-eds and blog posts as material to support their “racist” positions, so I’m told.

Back in the day, whites were afraid that slaves would be exposed to “dangerous” ideas, too, like dignity, humanity, the pursuit of knowledge, and…freedom. Radical. The freedom to think critically and for oneself can be as radical. It may result in an epidemic of knowledge and reasoned debate, and we all know how dangerous that would be. :?

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Chris Penn, 1965-2006

by La Shawn on January 25, 2006

in Pop Culture

Footloose I wasn’t a fan of actor Chris Penn, brother of Sean Penn, but when I read that he died, I immediately thought of the movie I most identified him with: Footloose.

Some of you thirty- and fortysomethings may have gone to see it in 1984. I was in high school, and my best friend and I went to see a new movie with Kevin Bacon, set in a small Texas town that outlawed dancing. Bacon was the new kid from Chicago, out of place, and coming to terms with his parents’ divorce.

Needless to say he shakes up the sleepy, backward town and demands the right to dance, leading his new friends on a town council/bigot-fighting crusade. His best friend was a country boy who liked to fight named Willard, played by Chris Penn (on the right wearing the hat). As Bacon’s character is risking life and limb for a prom, he teaches Willard how to dance. Those are the funniest scenes in the movie because, of course, Kevin Bacon can’t dance either! Like the young and impulsive often do, my friend and I sat through another showing of “Footloose” that day, and my favorite character wasn’t the “star” but the star’s best friend, played by Penn.

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Richard Pryor, 1940-2005

by La Shawn on December 10, 2005

in General

richard pryorComedian Richard Pryor died today. He was 65.

Pryor had a storied career and life. A lot of comedians will be paying homage to him for weeks to come. Arguably the first successful mainstream black comedian, Pryor inspired many would-be funny men and women.

Rising in the stand-up circuit dishing out “blue” comedy, Pryor hit the big screen years before anyone had ever heard of Eddie Murphy (who lived in the same Long Island, New York, neighborhood as I did when we were kids).

One of my favorite Pryor movies is likely considered his worst by critics, Moving (see the full list). Unfortunately he’s probably most known for almost burning himself up while freebasing cocaine back in the 80s. After that, he was plagued by multiple sclerosis and confined to a wheelchair. In the end, a heart attack took him out.

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Rosa Parks, 1913-2005

by La Shawn on October 25, 2005

in General

RPCall her “the woman who refused to get up,” but I’m sure Rosa Parks had no idea what her tired feet and frustrating treatment would lead to on December 1, 1955.

What became known as the Civil Rights movement was bound to start sooner or later. It was only a matter of time before blacks would reject all that “back of the bus” and “Whites Only” nonsense. In a country where they were paying taxes, too? Please. I’m surprised the movement didn’t hit America with full force 10-15 years earlier when black men were fighting for their country in WWII (see Against All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic).

December 1, 1955, was also the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted about a year. Blacks refused to ride the buses in Montgomery, Alabama, until November 13, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation on buses unconstitutional. Despite its embarrassing and often pathetic history, America is still, by far, the greatest country in the world, no matter what color you happen to be.

Parks and her husband Raymond didn’t have children, as far as I can tell from news accounts of her life. In a way, I suppose those she inspired to stand up to injustice were her offspring. Once people understand the power they have in a free country, the moral authority to demand justice, watch out. I once heard this line from a movie: “Change the way people think, and things will never be the same.”

Whatever her reasons that fateful day, I’m glad she decided to stay in her seat.

If you’ve blogged about Rosa Parks, link and trackback to this post, and I’ll link to yours. I heard that Haloscan is now compatible with WordPress; if not or you don’t have a trackback feature on your blog, use Simpletracks.

Bloggers: Michelle Malkin, Outside the Beltway, Wizbang, Vodkapundit, Tapscott’s Copy Desk, Down with Absolutes, Infinity Prolonged, Rajan Rishyakaran, Poliblog, Fried Baloney, Legacy Matters, Dustbury, Project Nothing!, Iowa Voice, B Relevant, Right Faith, Right We Are, The Subjective Scribe, Severe Writer’s Block, JamulBlog, The Anchoress…

More bloggers: Randy Thomas (of Exodus International), Brutally Honest, Independent Conservative, Samantha Pierce, Agent Tim, Crime Scene Blog, Sister Toldjah, Secular Blasphemy, One Voice Now, Double Toothpicks, Don Singleton, Curt Dalaba, Pardon My English…

Even more bloggers: Stop the ACLU, Your Pastoral Coach, LeaderNotes, Mean Dean, Mike’s Noise, WordPress Politics, The Colossus of Rhodey, Crooks & Liars, Oblogatory Anecdotes, National Center Blog, Carol Platt Liebau, The Reaction, Republican Jen…

Update (6:25 p.m.): And the last two links for the night are ShrinkWrapped, and one of my favorite reads, Discriminations. Linking will resume tomorrow morning. I’ll approve comments and trackbacks caught in the spam filter tomorrow, too. Thanks for reading and linking to LBC, and I hope you’ve bookmarked some of these new-to-you blogs. ;)

Previous obituaries: Nipsey Russell, Johnnie Cochran, Ossie Davis, Johnny Carson, Shirley Chisholm, Rick James, Ronald Reagan and Superman.

Update II (10/26): After Instapundit linked last night, several bloggers tracked back to this post, and some of the trackbacks were caught in the spam filter. Sorry about that. I know the frustration. The following links will be the last I’ll include in this post, but you may continue to trackback and comment. Thanks!

Publius Pundit, Tel-Chai Nation, The Moderate Voice, Parableman, D.C. Thornton, Area417, My Right Mind, Texas Xtreme, PolitaKid, and brining up the rear, John, the blogger who designed the header graphic on my business blog.

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Blogospheric Conditions

by La Shawn on October 24, 2005

in Bloggers

Update (10/26): While you’re here, visit my business blog, The Language Artist.

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More must-read Da Vinci info at Jewels of the Jungle. Also see Ruminations by the Lake.

Who’s your blogfather/blogmother?

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Cloning Thomas Sowell

by La Shawn on March 10, 2004

in BC Wisdom

When I began reading Thomas Sowell’s column a few years ago, I was struck by his erudite, sometimes “too intellectual” style. I thought, “The average person won’t understand what this man is talking about!”

Over the years, after much reading and studying the issues on my own, I’ve learned to appreciate his work.

I wish there were thousands of Thomas Sowells walking around Washington, D.C. What a great city this would be.

I don’t know whether he’s a Christian, but what he writes about homosexuals and their perceived right to be “married” hits the mark:

Love affairs are personal relations. Marriage is a legal relation. To say that government should not get involved in legal relations is to say that government has no business governing.

Homosexuals were on their strongest ground when they said that what happens between “consenting adults” in private is none of the government’s business. But now gay activists are taking the opposite view, that it is government’s business — and that government has an obligation to give its approval.

Then there are the strained analogies with the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King challenged the racial laws of their time. So, the argument goes, what is wrong with Massachusetts judges and the mayor of San Francisco challenging laws that they consider unjust today?

First of all, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were private citizens and they did not put themselves above the law. On the contrary, they submitted to arrest in order to gain the public support needed to change the laws.

As private citizens, neither Mrs. Parks nor Dr. King wielded the power of government. Their situation was very different from that of public officials who use the power delegated to them through the framework of law to betray that framework itself, which they swore to uphold as a condition of receiving their power.

Also check out this interview, “Sowell Reaches Beyond Rhetoric.”

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I Wish I Was In Dixie!

by La Shawn on November 22, 2003

in Lunacy

JFK: Breaking the News is a really good article on revisionist history about race relations, “right wingers” and the JFK assassination.

From Oregon Magazine Larry Leonard writes:

The 14th Amendment was opposed by Democrats. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was opposed by Democrats. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was opposed by Democrats — that opposition in the end taking the form of a 52 (one source says more than 90) day filibuster in the Senate. The last Democrat to participate in that filibuster was Senator Robert Byrd of Virginia, a former member of the K.K.K.

Every single advance by black Americans from the end of slavery to the end of Jim Crow to calling out the National Guard to protect Rosa Parks was the direct result of actions by Republicans. The designation “radical” Republican originated in the U.S. Congress, and was the label attached to those men who ended slavery in the northern states, and eventually throughout the United States…

I wrote an article about the subject last year titled “The New Black Codes.”