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It is amazing to realize that in the grand scheme of things we are not far removed from this. Thanks for posting. Interesting read.
by goatherders 8y ago
It is amazing to realize that in the grand scheme of things we are not far removed from this. Thanks for posting. Interesting read.
- michaelchisari 8y agoAround 9% of our population were grown adults when segregation ended. Our history is nearer than we prefer to admit.
- projectileboy 8y agoAnd it continued in so many ways! When MTV first aired in the early 80s, they would not play videos by black artists.
- ams6110 8y agoCitation? That's not my memory.
- projectileboy 8y agoThere are a lot of different tellings of this story; here’s one: https://www.thoughtco.com/when-mtv-first-aired-black-videos-2834657 https://www.thoughtco.com/when-mtv-first-aired-black-videos-...
- purple-again 8y agoHere is the relevant excerpt from the link provided by another user. "Scant" is read by me to mean 'yes there were in fact videos, just not in the proportion to what should have been" in direct response to "they would not play videos" There is no room for 'sides to the story'. It was a statement made and countered by this source. We can take issue with the source if you like, but I looked them up and didn't see anything partisan about them. When MTV debuted on Aug. 1, 1981, at least one black face on the network was a mainstay. It belonged to J.J. Jackson, the sole African American on MTV's roster of video jockeys, or VJs as they became known. Despite Jackson’s presence on MTV through 1986, the network faced allegations of racism for giving scant airtime to videos featuring people of color. MTV executives have denied that racism was at the root of the network’s “blackout,” saying that black artists received little airplay because their music didn’t fit the channel’s rock-based format. “MTV was originally designed to be a rock music channel,” said Buzz Brindle, MTV’s former director of music programming, to Jet magazine in 2006. “It was difficult for MTV to find African American artists whose music fit the channel’s format that leaned toward rock at the outset.” With so few black rockers, adding African Americans to MTV’s roster proved difficult, according to the network’s co-founder Les Garland, whom Jet also interviewed. “We had nothing to pick from,” Garland explained. “Fifty percent of my time was spent in the early days of MTV convincing artists to make music videos and convincing record labels to put up money to make those videos…”
- forapurpose 8y agoThat tells only MTV's side of the story, and IME everyone has an excuse for discrimination. It's not a signal of anything; it's just part of the process. Also, can you provide a link to the source? To quote, either start each paragraph with ">", or put asterisks (sans spaces) before and after the text.
- laretluval 8y agoWho would have sufficient information to tell another side to this story?
- icebraining 8y agoWell, it seems interesting that when David Bowie asked the same question to one of MTV's veejays, his answer was more about the sensibilities of the viewers than the lack of supply: “We have to try and do what we think not only New York and Los Angeles will appreciate, but also Poughkeepsie or the Midwest. Pick some town in the Midwest which would be scared to death by … a string of other black faces, or black music.” Which is more like saying, "we're not racists, we just have to appease racists to make our profits". https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/01/11/how-david-bowie-confronted-mtv-for-ignoring-black-artists-in-the-early-1980s/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/w...
- mobilefriendly 8y agoMichael Jackson's Thriller video was a huge force in bringing MTV to mass audiences.
- gaadd33 8y agoWere there a lot of music videos made before MTV? Just curious about the progression of them and how they came to be distributed before there was a cable tv channel.
- ams6110 8y agoIf there's one thing pretty constant in human history, it's that we do terrible things to each other. Always need to be on guard for this. But don't overlook the good we do. We (the United States) did end slavery, and then segregation, at a huge and bloody cost.
- forapurpose 8y agoI agree, and I'd also point to women becoming full members of society, as individuals, citizens, and workers, after thousands of years of human history (though with much work remaining). But let's also remember that fixing an evil eventually means that we are committing an evil repeatedly in the interim. Generations of African-Americans lived and died under slavery and segregation; that it was stopped eventually did them no good, and more generations continue to face discrimination right now. It's similar to when a person is freed after decades of imprisonment for an unjust conviction: It's better than leaving them in prison, but a great evil was committed. MLK put it well:[0] I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate ... 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." [0] Letter From a Birmingham Jail by MLK, the most valuable words you can read about the subject of oppression and the response to it: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
- mncharity 8y ago> But let's also remember that fixing an evil eventually means that we are committing an evil repeatedly in the interim. Tick, tick - 4 people were just born. 250 people will be born in the next minute. 360k people will be born today. And also tomorrow. 2.5M this week. 130M this year. In about 6 years, almost all of them will hit school. School. Schools that are pervasively wretched. Can you make them less wretched? You have six years to change the world. For each 4 years your improvements are delayed, your window misses half a billion people. Good luck. Tick, tock. One thing I took away from working on One Laptop Per Child, is that few appreciate the breathtakingly high cost of time.
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago“We” being some white people, because needless to say, this isn’t news or hard to admit if you’re black in America. If someone wants to argue that racism is over, that it was “a long time ago” it’s not going to be someone still on the sharp end of the stick.
- greglindahl 8y agoI suspect that many schoolchildren in the South can also remember the echos of segregation -- even though I started school 1 year after schools were integrated, there were a lot of remaining signs of the segregation era. The elementary school that I went to in 1st grade was torn down a year later because it was falling apart: that was OK for a black school during segregation, but having half the toilets and water fountains broken wasn't OK for an integrated school.
- forapurpose 8y ago> I suspect that many schoolchildren in the South can also remember the echos of segregation To add to your point, they can see it now: Even though it's not the law, schools are highly segregated and, IIRC articles I read awhile go, funding to schools that are predominantly African-American is much lower.
- chimeracoder 8y ago> I suspect that many schoolchildren in the South can also remember the echos of segregation Remember? You can see it now. Not just in the South, but in every state. In fact, Oregon is probably the state where segregation and its effects are the most visible today.
- rayiner 8y agoIt’s worse than that. It’s not like segregation ended when Brown v. Board was handed down in 1954. The President had to send the national guard to desegregate the University of Alabama in 1963. Court supervised desegregation continues for decades after Brown. Key desegregation decisions were handed down from the Supreme Court in the late 1960s and in the early 1970s. Of course there was lots of attempts to end-run around the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that amounted to de jure segregation. I think a better benchmark is this: public opposition to interracial marriage flipped (from being the majority view to the minority view) between when Yahoo! was founded in 1994 and Google in 1998. Clinton was President, Seinfeld was on the air, and Quake was out.
- pizza 8y agoMany people assume (educational) segregation's gotten better, but there's reason to suspect it's gotten worse > CASHIN: In 1954, 0 percent of black children in this country attended a majority white school. By 1988, 43 percent of black kids did. So we were fulfilling the promise of Brown. We were increasing in integration every year from the mid-'60s to the late '80s. We were closing the achievement gap between black and white kids. > And then, in 1988, we begin to retreat. And in the '90s, the Supreme Court threw three opinions - signaled to lower courts that it was time for federal courts to get out of the business of policing schools' desegregation. And school segregation levels are about where they were in 1968. So we kind of lost 50 years of progress. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/28/597750714/a-look-at-the-state-of-school-integration-64-years-after-brown-v-board-of-educat https://www.npr.org/2018/03/28/597750714/a-look-at-the-state...
- Retric 8y agoThe population is rather segregated, if a kid needs to be bussed an extra 30+ minutes each way it's not nessisarily worth it.
- AaronFriel 8y agoYou introduced a strawman. If self-sorting has introduced dramatically greater geographic segregation since 1988, the onus is on you to show it before claiming that. In practice, school district gerrymandering has effectively recreated "separate but equal". There is research (cited in the article linked below) that school districts are doing this. https://www.vox.com/2018/1/8/16822374/school-segregation-gerrymander-map https://www.vox.com/2018/1/8/16822374/school-segregation-ger...
- jfaucett 8y ago> It is amazing to realize that in the grand scheme of things we are not far removed from this. With "we" you mean the "united states"? There are millions of people the world over in slavery right now, so "we" in terms of humanity have still not overcome this problem. [1,2] 1. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2014/11/23/247-wall-st-countries-most-slaves/70033422/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2014/11/23/247-wall-st-... 2. https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/ https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/
- goatherders 8y agoThanks, doc. Yes, I meant the united states. Yes, I know there is still human bondage out there. Yes, I know the world is bigger than just the USA. I was thanking someone for posting an interesting story. Not everything here needs to be a discussion or nuance and grammar. That's what Twitter is for.
- jfaucett 8y agono reason to get upset. This wasn't anything against your comment. There's surprisingly a lot of people who don't know there's around 40 million people living in slavery right now. I posted some links so those people can find more information about it.
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoMore amazing about the number is that there are now more people living in slavery than there were during the 'era of slavery.' And there's an extremely high chance that you're regularly consuming food that's the product of slavery. Particularly seafood and chocolate. Hershey, Mars, Nestle, Kraft, and some of the largest indirect sponsors of slavery. And then there are slave-like conditions where people's iPhones are assembled in factors by people making next to nothing living in on-site dormitories surrounded by suicide nets. Like many things today, I think the real moral is that people have just become better at managing their image and public relations. And similarly the only reason I post this is because I think people are mostly ignorant of the past and present. We often view history like a Hollywood movie with good guys, bad guys, and a happy ending. Reality is rarely so kind.
- the_cat_kittles 8y agoany time anyone uses "its legal" as a justification for something, i always think of this.
- rmason 8y agoIt's just a reminder that America isn't that old a country. My late father and his brother were teenage boys when this book was written. My dad remembered watching the parades as a young boy for both Marshall Foch (French WW1 general) and Charles Lindberg. He knew friends of his family who fought in the Civil War.
- lisper 8y agoHuman civilization originated about 10,000 years ago (more or less). The oldest surviving human writings date back to about 5000 years ago. The classic Greek philosophers and mathematicians (Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras) lived about 2500 years ago. Ptolemy lived about 2000 years ago. Copernicus lived about 500 years ago. Newton published Principia 331 years ago. Darwin published Origin of Species 159 years ago. Slavery in the U.S. formally ended 153 years ago. The Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk 115 years ago. Einstein published general relativity 103 years ago. Alan Turing published "On computable numbers" 82 years ago. The first atomic bomb was detonated 73 years ago. Bell's theorem was published 54 years ago. The Apple II was introduced 41 years ago. The Aspect experiment (the first experimental test of Bell's theorem) took place 36 years ago. The Macintosh was introduced 34 years ago. The first exoplanet was discovered 26 years ago. Y Combinator graduated its first class of startups 13 years ago. The iPhone was introduced 11 years ago. Gravity waves were first detected 3 years ago. But nothing at all interesting has happened since then. ;-)
- lglk00n 8y agoI knew my 100% Native American great grandfather. He was a kid in the late 1800s. Not one to tell many stories. Mostly just a friendly elder who likes to listen to us kids He did share a couple anecdotes about being moved by the government for a book report I wrote in grade school Not very far removed from that bullshit either But yeah American wealth was generated by free enterprise as the story goes, right? What a shithole country
- eanzenberg 8y agoWhich country wasn’t?
- jpster 8y agoWhat’s remarkable in the case of America, however is its reps’ very voluble profession that it is somehow better than other countries, more freedom-loving, more just, etc. with a straight face.
- mikec3010 8y agoNative Americans did some pretty despicable things to each other too.
- acjohnson55 8y agoI guess it's a total wash then, eh?
- danharaj 8y agoWhat exactly is the argument here?
- neuromantik8086 8y agoI think he's just pointing out that the lumping of Native Americans into one discrete category is a bit artificial, since white-native and native-native relations varied widely depending upon the tribe (and the white people). For instance, the Iroquois and white settlers in upstate New York had a much better relationship than tribes in the far west and pioneers I think. On the other hand, the Iroquois hated the Algonquins. An anecdote: I grew up close by the Oneida Indian Nation and one of the town seals for an area village (the aptly named Whitesboro) had a white man choking an Oneida. The seal was depicting a good-natured wrestling match from the 18th century that led to a decent long-lasting relationship between the Oneidas and early settlers, but at first glance it looked very terrible. Someone at the Daily Show discovered this, descended upon Whitesboro and strongarmed them into changing the seal (and honestly they probably should have anyways since it isn't obvious what it meant without more context). What I found ironic was that they interviewed a Lenape (a.k.a. the sworn enemy of the Iroquois) who dutifully informed them how terrible the seal was. In the meantime, more serious issues that the Oneida actually care more about were ignored by the Daily Show. Namely, the Daily Show completely glossed over the fact that the Oneida Indian Nation is essentially a puppet state run by Ray Halbritter, who was illegally elected and essentially does/did the bidding of Sherwood Boehlert (a former white congressman from the area). It probably wouldn't have made for as sexy of a segment, but it still annoys me that of all the white-native issues from my area, they chose to highlight the Whitesboro seal. [edit] There's also the question of Iroquois-Iroquois relations after the Revolutionary War, when some tribes in the confederacy sided with the British and had to flee to Canada and other tribes stayed in New York. Disclaimer: Fact check my statements because I'm not totally sure I understand the Ray Halbritter issue myself / don't think about it on a daily basis.
- azernik 8y agoWorld War II is as far removed from us as the Civil War was to the people living through World War II.
- Ar-Curunir 8y agoWe're still not "removed from this" in the US; private prisons are basically indentured labour.
- leesalminen 8y agoWe still jail people who are financially unable to pay fines. This happened frequently to the indigent population in my town. They would be ticketed for all sorts of nonsense. The jail got so full that the Sheriff just started releasing people.
- icantdrive55 8y agoThis has to stop. It's been going on way too long. I think about it every time I see a cop. It's 10x worse than when I was growing up because municipalities realized no one was keeping track of the amounts of the fees/fines, and they just raised them. Along with making everything against some law? I really think the only way to stop it is to tie Fees/fines to income.
- madengr 8y agoThere is someone alive today whose grandfather was born during the revolutionary war. The key is that they all fathered kids in their 70’s.
- curun1r 8y agoThe US Government still pays a civil war pension to the daughter of a Union soldier. The last surviving American veteran of WWI died in 2011. Whenever I hear stuff like that, I always have the same reaction you did that we're more connected to these historical events than we think we are.
- blackbagboys 8y agoPresident John Tyler (born 1790, President 1841-1845) has two living grandchildren.
- wutbrodo 8y agoI remember feeling this acutely when I say a clip from a TV show in the 50s that had as a guest a man who was present for Lincoln's assassination (as a young child). Pretty wild to think that we're only a few short hops from something that's practically modern mythology at this pt.
- js2 8y agoThe past is all around us. There's a state park[1] I run in many weekends. It has seperate north and south entrances that are about a 15 minute drive apart, with no road between them within the park. I was curious why the park was built this way. It turns out the park was literally segregated till the early sixties and the north side of the park was for the white folks and the south side of the park for black folks. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Umstead_State_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Umstead_State_Park
- jbuzbee 8y agoMy father, now nearly 87, was born in the deep south 70 years after the end of slavery. If you think about it, as he walked down the streets of his little town at age 10, every single black person he saw over the age of 80, would have been a former slave. Every one.
- everdev 8y agoWell, they'd be babies or young kids, but still born into slavery.
- everdev 8y agoOr, only 75 years on from the Holocaust. Both of my grandfathers who I knew who for many years fought against Hitler. The idea of a fascist takeover of Europe or the world was a very real threat for them.
- jacquesm 8y agoIt's a very real threat to us today.