The Hypocritical Move of the Civil Rights Movement
on February 20th, 2006 at 2:09 amProtestors during the 1960′s and early seventies were correct to protest against the
intentional killing of innocent civilians during the Vietnam war. Since that time, anti-war activists aided by the Hollywood machine have not grown tired of reminding us of these unfortunate events in our history.
What you will not hear is a comparison of the civilian casualty count during versus after America’s involvement in the war. It is estimated that roughly 587,000 Vietnamese civilians lost their lives (mind you, these were caused by both pro-South Vietnam troops (including America) and the North Vietnamese army. But according to R.J Rummel (Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii), here is what took place the final years during America’s involvement in Vietnam and beyond:
In proportion to its population, Cambodia underwent a human catastrophe unparalleled in this century. Out of a 1970 population of probably near 7,100,000 Cambodia probably lost slightly less than 4,000,000 people to war, rebellion, man-made famine, genocide, politicide, and mass murder. The vast majority, almost 3,300,000 men, women, and children (including 35,000 foreigners), were murdered within the years 1970 to 1980 by successive governments and guerrilla groups. Most of these, a likely near 2,400,000, were murdered by the communist Khmer Rouge. (more…)
With American and other anti-North Vietnam troops out of the way, the communist regime went on a killing spree that resulted in the loss of life of millions. Yet despite that fact, Martin Luther King Jr. (a man that spent many years denouncing oppression on ANY group) and others still considered Vietnam and “unjust war.” It is unfortunate that for years, the Civil Rights movement has avoided dealing with the real “casualties” of taking a anti-war stance.
The cost of King’s anti-war stance
Although I agree with Martin Luther King Jr.’s contention with America’s demand on our young black men to fight for a country that still did not see us as equal, I strongly disagree with his conclusion that the war in Vietnam was “unjust”.
King and others in the anti-war movement may have been successful in convincing the American government to pull out of Vietnam, but their movement offered no solutions to the millions of lives that were slaughtered under the newly formed communist rule over South Vietnam. King’s opposition to the war led to his formation of the Poor People’s Campaign believing that too much money was being spent on war and not enough on helping the poor in this country. With increased funding and the creation of more entitlement programs to address the needs of the poor, almost 40 years later many who share King’s ideas of the nation’s responsibility to the poor still believe that more money is needed (never mind not being forthright of all the years of gross mismanagement within these programs–both internally and with the individuals on the receiving end).
The gospel of Non-Violence (with an asterisk)
While King made it very clear that he was against any usage of violence to bring a desired resolution, to my knowledge he does not make mention of the fact that it took “violence” (better known as the Civil war) to destabilize the system of institutionalized slavery here in the United States. A different time period, yes, but the byproduct (regardless if the war was not just about the liberation of blacks or not) was the same as with World War I and II, Vietnam and currently Iraq–the liberation of an oppressed people.
Although racism still existed here in America for a number of years beyond the end of the Civil war, because of the great sacrifice of soldiers, black America was taken off the endless cycle of slavery and placed on a path (a bumpy one at that) that has ultimately led to path of much greater opportunity and success than that of our black brothers and sisters of yesteryear.
The quandary of the post-civil rights ideology
Although it was easy for the post civil rights movement to draw similarities between the plight of blacks under Jim Crow and the apartheid system of South Africa, those same individuals are very reluctant to see and denounce the same pattern of oppression that took place in Iraq under Saddam Hussein for numbers of years. To do so would mean that A. they are in agreement with a Republican president and B. believe that the war in Iraq was “justified”. So while millions of Iraqi citizens (free from state-sponsored oppression and tyranny) lined the street for the first time in years to take part in a fair election process, the old guard of the post civil rights movement as well as many in the black community gave a reluctant acknowledgement of this historical moment in time.
I guess the “dream” was conditional.
While it was the right thing to do for the civil rights movement to speak against the oppression against black Americans, history itself has proven that the move to take an anti-war stance proved to be very hypocritical. While the anti-war movement has been successful at painting the picture that blacks have always been this passive monolithic group who were able to achieve a desired result on just raw determination alone, our own history tells us a different story as it is full of examples where a non-violence approach was not enough.
