Week 5- American Civil Rights Movement

 This week our class focused on the American Civil Rights movement.  It’s a subject I’ve become fairly familiar with having taken African American History last year.  Side note: it feels good knowing the generalities of subject when the topic comes up in another class.  Yay for me.  Anyway, the thing I found most interesting is the type of befuddlement I always feel when studying the black rights of the 50’s and 60’s.  We live in such a PC society today.  We hear all about horrible instances of people being treated badly all around the world and even in the US during slavery.  But it never fails to blow my mind, how 50 years ago, Americans were so callous and cruel to each other.  Aside from black rights, but Japanese internment as well, Americans (generally) believed it was perfectly acceptable to discriminate based on color.  A level of discrimination that went well beyond dislike and separate but equal laws, but to government enabled atrocities such allowing police dogs to attack children and murderers to walk free, and in the case of Japanese internment, to force an entire population into concentration camps. 

These crimes all occurred on American soil, as recently as 50 years ago.  My mother was a young girl at the time.  When I see elderly people I can’t help but wonder what their stance was at the time and if negative, how they cope today.  Not even elderly I suppose.  Anyone over 60 could recall such societal turmoil, even as a child.

American culture has certainly come a long way.  Political correctness is a way of life now.  We take care to practice sensitivity to all those around us.  I consider the gay marriage issue that so many are up in arms about now.  And a part of me is so amused.  Interracial marriage was such a taboo subject just a few decades ago, and now most children born today are of mixed descent.  It really is very funny how protestors are trying so hard to make a stand prohibiting same sex unions, when in all truth, there’s nothing they can do about it.  It’s only a matter of time.  In this case, the history student has learned that in some instances, history will indeed repeat itself.