5 ms·

He was 80 when he died and not all that young when he took a stand. We are closer to barbarity in time and in fact than we are comfortable acknowledging. Vale.

rayiner 6y ago
If Bill Gates has been born black in my Maryland county, he’d have gone to segregated schools until high school.
082349872349872 6y ago
I think the US military[1] is ahead of the US in general[2] on equality because it started integrating in 1948: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23869499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23869499 [1] also from 1948: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm "If our difference of opinion is so inclusive that we can agree on nothing political, our differences have gone from mere opinion into the depths of ideology. Here the institutional framework is affected. You and I would not want to live in the same city; we could not feel safe in one another's presence; each would be afraid of the effect which the other might have on the morals of the community. If I were a Nazi, and you a democrat, you would not like the idea of my children living next door to yours. If I believed that you were a good enough creature—poor deluded devil—but that you were not fit to vote, scarcely to be trusted with property, not to be trusted as an army officer, and generally subversive and dangerous, you would find it hard to get along with me." Keeping in mind that Linebarger was writing with an eye to being "unobjectionable on the score of security by the Department of the Army", and from other dots scattered through the text, I would not be surprised if the last sentence had had a more concrete reference than its abstract wording suggests. [2] reasons for optimism: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/18/politics/peggy-wallace-kennedy-bash-intv/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/18/politics/peggy-wallace-ke... George Wallace (1963): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace%27s_1963_Inaugural_Address#1962–63_campaign_and_Inaugural_Address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace%27s_1963_Inaugu... George Wallace's grandson (1996) asked why his grandfather did such horrible things to other people. (Apparently left to his own devices, Wallace might've been more moderate. But his constituency demanded more, as in The Candidate, so he declared "I was out-niggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be out-niggered again.")
wdr1 6y ago
Barbara Walters, Martin Luther King & Anne Frank were all born in the same year. To your point, what we think of as "history" wasn't that long ago.

rayiner 6y ago

If Bill Gates has been born black in my Maryland county, he’d have gone to segregated schools until high school.

082349872349872 6y ago

I think the US military[1] is ahead of the US in general[2] on equality because it started integrating in 1948: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23869499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23869499 [1] also from 1948: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm "If our difference of opinion is so inclusive that we can agree on nothing political, our differences have gone from mere opinion into the depths of ideology. Here the institutional framework is affected. You and I would not want to live in the same city; we could not feel safe in one another's presence; each would be afraid of the effect which the other might have on the morals of the community. If I were a Nazi, and you a democrat, you would not like the idea of my children living next door to yours. If I believed that you were a good enough creature—poor deluded devil—but that you were not fit to vote, scarcely to be trusted with property, not to be trusted as an army officer, and generally subversive and dangerous, you would find it hard to get along with me." Keeping in mind that Linebarger was writing with an eye to being "unobjectionable on the score of security by the Department of the Army", and from other dots scattered through the text, I would not be surprised if the last sentence had had a more concrete reference than its abstract wording suggests. [2] reasons for optimism: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/18/politics/peggy-wallace-kennedy-bash-intv/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/18/politics/peggy-wallace-ke... George Wallace (1963): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace%27s_1963_Inaugural_Address#1962–63_campaign_and_Inaugural_Address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace%27s_1963_Inaugu... George Wallace's grandson (1996) asked why his grandfather did such horrible things to other people. (Apparently left to his own devices, Wallace might've been more moderate. But his constituency demanded more, as in The Candidate, so he declared "I was out-niggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be out-niggered again.")

wdr1 6y ago

Barbara Walters, Martin Luther King & Anne Frank were all born in the same year. To your point, what we think of as "history" wasn't that long ago.