It's kind of exhausting to have to push back against willful ignorance, but it has to be done. So here I am doing it. Again.
Mike Ditka is on the record as saying that there hasn't been any oppression in this country in 100 years. This piece of interesting writing makes a similar claim. Neither could possibly be more wrong.
As the argument goes, in the Oppression Olympics POC can't even score a tarnished bronze cuz yunno, Saudi women just got the right to drive in 2017!, or Chinese dissenters!, or Russian LGBTQ! or Christians in majority-Muslim countries! (but not Palestinians in Israel, or Black Africans in apartheid-era South Africa or Black people in Jim Crow southern states tho) The logic is (entirely predictably) illogical and hypocritical but it makes for a good rallying cry I suppose.
The historically ignorant have decided that if things are better today than they were before emancipation, then everyone should just shut their pie hole and whistle a happy tune. But that's not how this works. What these folk fail to realize is that no improvement to the social condition of oppressed or excluded groups occurs naturally. It certainly hasn't occurred naturally or easily in these United States. Our evolutionary process has always required agitation, effort, pressure and spublic shaming. America has never yet recognized the rights of those it routinely brutalizes without a damn good reason. Folk have to give America reasons to live up to her hype. Calling out her oppressive nature? That's very much part of the process. Ditka is an ass if he thinks this place is anything BUT oppressive....but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm supposed to offer up evidence and then draw a conclusion. Beg pardon!
In honor of Ditka'spatently ridiculous claim that there's been no oppression these last one hundred years, here are some of the shameful events of the first fifty years of those 100. US history is replete with stories and so here are a few. Enjoy. I guess.
1917 to 1931:
485 Black men, women and children were lynched. Source here. The likelihood is that these data are incomplete and underrepresent the actual totals. But neither lynching nor the threat thereof are oppression. Mike says so.
1923:
Rosewood Massacre
1931:
The Scottsboro Boys: 9 Black youths indicted on a charge of having raped two White women (shades of Susan Smith and Sherry Hall).
"Two were paroled in 1944, one in 1951. When the fourth escaped (1948) to Michigan, the state refused to return him to Alabama. In 1976, Alabama pardoned the last known surviving
But there's been no oppression in 100 years Mike, cuz crying rape and getting men murdered or incarcerated for life? That ain't oppression, that's just fun and games.
1939:
Marian Anderson sings at the National Mall because the lovely Nice White Ladies of the DAR Constitution Hall refused her access to their space to concertize. This ain't oppression, this is creating an opportunity to sing for a far larger (if less comfortable) audience!
1944:
The GI Bill is passed but the majority of Black GIs are unable to access those benefits because - we can't call it oppression - something limits their access to universities and housing developments. I wonder what the problem was? It must have been laziness and a woeful lack of ambition.
I can live with that.
Part two (the next fifty years) in a few days.
Mike Ditka is on the record as saying that there hasn't been any oppression in this country in 100 years. This piece of interesting writing makes a similar claim. Neither could possibly be more wrong.
As the argument goes, in the Oppression Olympics POC can't even score a tarnished bronze cuz yunno, Saudi women just got the right to drive in 2017!, or Chinese dissenters!, or Russian LGBTQ! or Christians in majority-Muslim countries! (but not Palestinians in Israel, or Black Africans in apartheid-era South Africa or Black people in Jim Crow southern states tho) The logic is (entirely predictably) illogical and hypocritical but it makes for a good rallying cry I suppose.
The historically ignorant have decided that if things are better today than they were before emancipation, then everyone should just shut their pie hole and whistle a happy tune. But that's not how this works. What these folk fail to realize is that no improvement to the social condition of oppressed or excluded groups occurs naturally. It certainly hasn't occurred naturally or easily in these United States. Our evolutionary process has always required agitation, effort, pressure and spublic shaming. America has never yet recognized the rights of those it routinely brutalizes without a damn good reason. Folk have to give America reasons to live up to her hype. Calling out her oppressive nature? That's very much part of the process. Ditka is an ass if he thinks this place is anything BUT oppressive....but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm supposed to offer up evidence and then draw a conclusion. Beg pardon!
In honor of Ditka's
1917 to 1931:
485 Black men, women and children were lynched. Source here. The likelihood is that these data are incomplete and underrepresent the actual totals. But neither lynching nor the threat thereof are oppression. Mike says so.
1923:
Rosewood Massacre
1931:
The Scottsboro Boys: 9 Black youths indicted on a charge of having raped two White women (shades of Susan Smith and Sherry Hall).
"Two were paroled in 1944, one in 1951. When the fourth escaped (1948) to Michigan, the state refused to return him to Alabama. In 1976, Alabama pardoned the last known surviving
Scottsboro boy,Clarence Norris, who had broken parole and fled the state in 1946 the other three who had been convicted were posthumously pardoned in 2013. Ultimately, the nine were all exonerated." From Fact Monster.
But there's been no oppression in 100 years Mike, cuz crying rape and getting men murdered or incarcerated for life? That ain't oppression, that's just fun and games.
1939:
Marian Anderson sings at the National Mall because the lovely Nice White Ladies of the DAR Constitution Hall refused her access to their space to concertize. This ain't oppression, this is creating an opportunity to sing for a far larger (if less comfortable) audience!
The GI Bill is passed but the majority of Black GIs are unable to access those benefits because - we can't call it oppression - something limits their access to universities and housing developments. I wonder what the problem was? It must have been laziness and a woeful lack of ambition.
See more here.
It wasn't until 1948 that the military was actually desegregated, not that that had any impact on POC GIs accessing their benefits, I'm just pointing that out. But again, that's not oppression according to Mikey.
1945:
Jackie Robinson faces racial slurs, death threats and abuse to break the color line in baseball. But this ain't oppression.
1954:
Brown vs. the Board of Education determined that segregated education was unconstitutional. Until the SCOTUS decision, not only were our schools separate but our teachers were frequently paid less. But I don't know if you'd rightly refer to that as oppression. /sarcasm font/
1955:
Emmett Till is brutally murdered by Roy Bryant and his brother-in-law J. W. Milam. Neither spends a minute in jail. (Shades of 2013, '14, '15, '16, '17 and the absence of prosecution or the not guilty findings in the deaths of unarmed POC by the police). But don't you say this is oppression!
Just bye the bye, Carol Bryant Donham, the woman who accused Emmett Till, admitted in 2017 that she is a liar and the primary cause of the death of a child. Oppression then, oppression now if you ask me, but you didn't ask me. You asked Mike and Mike says ain't nothing to see here.
1957:
Subsequent to Brown vs the Board of Ed. Daisy Bates, an NAACP activist found nine young people who were willing to break the barrier to entry to the Little Rock Central High School. Their eventual success in that effort generated this iconic image but don't you dare call this oppression!
1960:
Black students begin the sit-ins at Woolworth's segregated lunch counters.
1961:
Freedom Rides begin to register Black voters.
1962:
James Meredith becomes the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. President Kennedy has to send in 5000 troops after rioting breaks out. But that ain't hardly oppressive! I mean the president stepped in didn't he?
Medgar Evers is murdered for his work registering African American voters in Mississippi. More here.
1963:
MLK arrested in Birmingham, Alabama and pens the Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom occurs.
The I Have A Dream speech is given (which people like Ditka misunderstand to this day).
1964:
Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination against POC based on race, color, religion or national origin. The need to legislate rights for POC indicates quite clearly that absent legislation - say it with me - they were being oppressed. But don't tell Mike. His head might explode.
The bodies of James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner are found. These three had been among the hundreds of Freedom Riders registering would-be voters in the south when they went missing on June 21, 1964.
1965:
Bloody Sunday - State troopers attack peaceful protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Fifty marchers are hospitalized.
Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed, making it easier for Black folk in the south to register and actually vote. Poll taxes and literacy tests are deemed illegal.
1967:
Thurgood Marshall beoomes the first African American to ascend to the Supreme Court.
Loving v. Virginia - the land mark anti-miscegenation case - is decided. Preventing interracial marriage is deemed to be unconstitutional.
As a friend of mine put it as I was lamenting my inability to write this list in 1000 words or less, her offering to Ditka would have been merely this: "You blind, ig'nant, clueless effer, since you can't read and can only handle pablum, watch 2 or 3 episodes of Black-ish and hush". So clearly, the preceding 1000 words are not for Mike. They're pretty much for everybody else BUT Mike. Mike is beyond the reach of information. It wasn't until 1948 that the military was actually desegregated, not that that had any impact on POC GIs accessing their benefits, I'm just pointing that out. But again, that's not oppression according to Mikey.
1945:
Jackie Robinson faces racial slurs, death threats and abuse to break the color line in baseball. But this ain't oppression.
1954:
Brown vs. the Board of Education determined that segregated education was unconstitutional. Until the SCOTUS decision, not only were our schools separate but our teachers were frequently paid less. But I don't know if you'd rightly refer to that as oppression. /sarcasm font/
1955:
Emmett Till is brutally murdered by Roy Bryant and his brother-in-law J. W. Milam. Neither spends a minute in jail. (Shades of 2013, '14, '15, '16, '17 and the absence of prosecution or the not guilty findings in the deaths of unarmed POC by the police). But don't you say this is oppression!
Just bye the bye, Carol Bryant Donham, the woman who accused Emmett Till, admitted in 2017 that she is a liar and the primary cause of the death of a child. Oppression then, oppression now if you ask me, but you didn't ask me. You asked Mike and Mike says ain't nothing to see here.
1956:
Here's Paul Robeson, the tremendous American basso profundo, of whom many White Americans will never have heard (a story for another day) being harangued by the HUAC - House UnAmerican Affairs Committee - in 1956 for his speeches and support for workers' and Negro rights.1957:
Subsequent to Brown vs the Board of Ed. Daisy Bates, an NAACP activist found nine young people who were willing to break the barrier to entry to the Little Rock Central High School. Their eventual success in that effort generated this iconic image but don't you dare call this oppression!
1960:
Black students begin the sit-ins at Woolworth's segregated lunch counters.
1961:
Freedom Rides begin to register Black voters.
1962:
James Meredith becomes the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. President Kennedy has to send in 5000 troops after rioting breaks out. But that ain't hardly oppressive! I mean the president stepped in didn't he?
Medgar Evers is murdered for his work registering African American voters in Mississippi. More here.
1963:
MLK arrested in Birmingham, Alabama and pens the Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom occurs.
The I Have A Dream speech is given (which people like Ditka misunderstand to this day).
1964:
Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination against POC based on race, color, religion or national origin. The need to legislate rights for POC indicates quite clearly that absent legislation - say it with me - they were being oppressed. But don't tell Mike. His head might explode.
The bodies of James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner are found. These three had been among the hundreds of Freedom Riders registering would-be voters in the south when they went missing on June 21, 1964.
1965:
Bloody Sunday - State troopers attack peaceful protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Fifty marchers are hospitalized.
Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed, making it easier for Black folk in the south to register and actually vote. Poll taxes and literacy tests are deemed illegal.
1967:
Thurgood Marshall beoomes the first African American to ascend to the Supreme Court.
Loving v. Virginia - the land mark anti-miscegenation case - is decided. Preventing interracial marriage is deemed to be unconstitutional.
I can live with that.
Part two (the next fifty years) in a few days.
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