| [ USA ] in KIDS 글 쓴 이(By): 구르미 (구르미) 날 짜 (Date): 2008년 3월 17일 월요일 오전 09시 18분 17초 제 목(Title): Re: On Rev. Wright Controversy From the excerpts of the book "In his own Right : The Political Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy", published 2001 by Joseph A. Palermo. Robert Kennedy's role in American politics during the 1960s was pivotal yet has defied attempts to define it. He was a junior senator from New York, but he was also much more. The public perceived him as possessing the intangible qualities of his brother, the slain president. From 1965 to 1968 Kennedy struggled to find his own voice in national affairs. "In His Own Right" examines this crucial period of Robert Kennedy's political career, combining the best of political biography with a gripping social history of the social movements of the 1960s. How did Kennedy make the transformation from cold warrior to grassroots activist, from being a political operator known for ruthlessness toward his opponents to becoming, by 1968, a "tribune of the underclass"? Based on never before seen documents, this intimate portrait of one of the most respected politicians never elected president describes Robert Kennedy's relationship with such well-known activists and political players as Benjamin Spock, Eugene McCarthy, Allard Lowenstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez, as well as the ordinary men and women who influenced Kennedy's views as he came to stand in the public arena and in the national consciousness as a man and a leader in his own right. ----- page 165-166. Kennedy's maturing awareness of the plight of African Americans during his Senate years was not limited to the South. On August 12, 1965, just five days after Johnson had signed the landmark Voting Rights Act, the Watts-Willowbrook section of South-Central Los Angeles exploded into six days of violence, including widespread acts of arson and looting. When order was finally restored, thirty-five people had been killed, twenty-eight of them black; 900 were injured, and more than 35,000 had been arrested. Twelve thousand National Guardsmen were sent in to quell the disturbance. Racism, poverty, and abuses by local law enforcement officials were the focus of black anger. The Watts rebellion showed Kennedy and the nation the depth of despair in African-American urban communities outside the South. While the National Guard battled blacks in Watts, Kennedy told reporters that he believed it was pointless to demand African American obey the law when they reacted to conditions that would lead any group to lash out at their oppressors. He advocated massive federal assistance to the cities for job training in black urban areas, especially targeting young people. In an offhand remark in the same interview, Kenney said he believed civil rights leaders, by focusing their attention almost exclusively on the South, had neglected the problems of poverty and racial discrimination that existed in the North and West. This notion resonated powerfully with Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Kennedy's word ate at him," Andrew Young later recalled. In the wake of the riot, King toured the damaged streets of Watts, and was met with hostility from Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty. Yorty, who was a right-wing Democrat and a Kennedy foe, dismissed King's charges of police brutalitiy as ridiculous, and rejected his proposal for a civilian review board to oversee the Los Angeles Police Department. King left the city frustrated, saying that the white leadership of Los Angeles displayed "a blind intransigence and ignorance of the tremendous social forces which are at work here." Kennedy subsequently toured Watts, met with local black leaders, and reached the same conclusion from the rioting as had King. Both King and Kennedy had elicited hostility from L.A.'s white power structure. After seeing Kennedy's stand on the riot, the African-American Democratic state senator from the Watts area, Mervin Dymally, became a strong supporter, and was a Kennedy delegate during the California primary. While Watts burned, Kennedy addressed the New York State convention of the Odd Fellows to speak out on the issues raised by the rebellion. He singled out unacceptable levels of black unemployment as the primary cause of the uprisings. He praised the accomplishments of the Southern civil rights movement, but added, in a statement that echoed the sentiments of civil rights activists: "It is one thing to assure a man the legal right to eat in a restaurant; it is another thing to assure he can earn the money to eat there." Kennedy argued that the riots arose, in part, from the government's inability to "directly affect the wide margins between Negro and white unemployment rates." With regard to the apparent disrespect for the law the outbreaks revealed, Kennedy explained that for blacks the law meant "something different" than it did for whites. "Law for the Negro in the South," he said, "has meant beatings and degradation and official discrimination; law has been his oppressor and his enemy. The Negro who has moved North has not found in law the same oppression it meant in the South. But neither has he found a friend and protector." The law, Kennedy said, does not protect blacks "from paying too much money for inferior goods," or "from have their furniture illegally repossessed"; it did not "protect them from having to keep lights turned on the feet of children at night, to keep them from being gnawed by rats." Nor did the legal system "fully protect their lives - their dignity - or encourage their hopes and trust in the future." This strong critique of racism in the American legal system from a former attorney general legitimized those who focused on the underlying social and economic causes of the riots. Kennedy showed an empathy with blacks' frustration at a time when the right wings of both major political parties were calling for increased repression under the guise of "law and order." From 1965 and 1968, both King's and Kennedy's interpretations of unemployment and poverty as the primary causes of the civil disorders remained essentially unchanged, and were consistent with their initial assessments of the Watts riot. They both also firmly believed that as a form of protest the riots were counterproductive. ---------------- Joshep A Palermo recently wrote an article on Huffingtonpost.com http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/barack-obama-sets-the-rec_b_91660.html http://tinyurl.com/35ncem |