Glenn Beck and the Long Civil Rights Movement
by Weiner
A great piece by history doctoral student Gabriel Winant on Glenn Beck’s sullying of the legacy of the African American Civil Rights Movement. Winant highlights the role of communists, socialists and social democrats, and labor activists in advancing the cause of Civil Rights, from before and including Martin Luther King Jr. He shows how Beck gets his history wrong–and right–in interesting ways. Here’s a great paragraph:
Laugh away at Glenn Beck’s paranoia, but — presumably unbeknownst to him — he’s actually got a point. The fact is that the basic norms of equality that we now think of as natural are indeed the result of radical agitation. Whatever her own politics are, Shirley Sherrod really was working in a tradition that goes back to people and groups whose beliefs Beck would find truly heinous. The grandparents of civil rights were folks who would never get through the vetting process for a job in the Obama administration today. They were much more like Van Jones than like his tormentor, Glenn Beck.
Read the whole thing.
Peter Wirzbicki
(wotty)
David Weinfeld
Julian Nemeth
Kristen Loveland
Bronwen Everill
Danny Bessner
afrahrichmond
