Charles Barkley: "MLK never spoke about black rights, but about civil rights"

[Winged one]

watching this mlk show

He made that statement so he wouldn't offend the white viewers. That makes him a coward in my book

 

[Piff Perkins]

It would literally take 5 minutes of research to discover that isn't true. King's most popular speeches often mentioned wanting equal rights for the negro, case closed. But Barkley has never been one to do research on anything, hence his terrible basketball insight.

He's a fool and an unknowing participant in the effort to whitewash King. He's basically saying King didn't talk about race. Which of course has been the conservative approach to race for decades: don't talk about it, and if you do talk about it you're the real racist or being divisive.

 

[Winged one]

I know some of y'all aren't big fans of Bomani Jones, but he did a good segment today (via his radio show) on King and the way he's whitewashed, especially in regards to the actual celebration of his birthday. He also discussed the quote about King's true feelings toward white moderates. Check it out instead of listening to these uber rich bammas discuss topics that they can't/won't provide any nuance to.

most people only know about the I have a dream speech. That's it and nothing more. They don't know about his other things he stood for

 

[homiedontplaydat]

“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

One of the realist statements Dr King ever made, they do the exact same shyt today

 

[Hiphopsocialite]

It is and when some serious shyt goes down racially they just cop please and make it seem shyt is sweet so fukk them.

They wouldn't dare jeopardize those checks.
Damn shame.

 

[Logmanjames]

Charles Barkley says c00n shyt. "Color" me surprised.

 

[BXKingPin82]

"Any negro who sought leadership over the black masses and refused to become a tool of the white power structure was either cast into prison, killed, hounded out of the country, or blasted into obscurity and isolation in his own land and among his own people."

- Cleaver

 

[Makavalli]

I stopped tuning in a long time ago. Barkley hit us a long time ago with the "i am not a role model" commercial but they rather be goofy than speak on serious shyt so i rather they just be quiet. The way they undermined Kap's nfl kneeling and protest just made me watch the games then turn it off when the clock hit 0

 

[martin payne]

i don't know what i'm gonna do during All-star weeknd, haven't watch that ball headed kewn all year

 

[3:30]

I am talking about methodology and techniques. Dr. King (and pretty much every African nation-builder and revolutionary of the age as well) had enormous respect for Gandhi and learned a lot from him and gave him enormous props. You go to the museum at MLK's childhood home in Atlanta, a good 1/3 of the museum is strictly devoted to Gandhi. Even though they couldn't meet before Gandhi was killed, Dr. King went to India anyway to meet with Gandhi's family and spent significant time there.


And like I said, the focus is on methodology, but the "Gandhi was an extreme exclusivist racist" claim was already debated in another thread and the evidence was clear. Gandhi was certainly racist for the first half of his life, until he had a budding awakening around 1909-1912, where the combination of his personal experiences with Africans in war and a book he read on the falsehood of racism turned his mind around. For the second half of his life, the last 35-40 years, he rejected racism. Look at the dates - Gandhi died in 1948, but all of his racist quotes are always from 40+ years before that. By the time he left Africa, he had enormous respect for Black Africans, and all his quotes about Africans and Black folk after that are extremely positive.

Just look at what the Black leaders of his time, from Africa and the USA both, had to say about him. They knew him MUCH better than we do, and they are quite heavy in their praise. To claim that we know Gandhi better than them because of a couple of quotes, when they were reading his work and seeing everything he did and even corresponding with him personally, is beyond arrogant and naive.



I haven't seen any evidence that he was a sexual abuser, but his sexual practices were weird as hell. Celibacy for the last 50 years of marriage or some shyt and doing enemas on himself and sleeping naked in the same bed as young women to prove his commitment to celibacy was total.
I ain't caping for any of that shyt.

I'll def check it out

These subtleties about character are really interesting and important .

For that insightful exchange you can hold this rep

 

[NoChillJones]

What ever happened to Barkley race show he was supposed to do I hope that shyt does a 0.0 rating shyt gonna be c00n central

The American people saw the preview and all agreed to tell his dumb his to go sit down somewhere. We all know what it is.....we don't need big country trying to spin it to some other unworldly bullshyt.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I'll def check it out

These subtleties about character are really interesting and important .

For that insightful exchange you can hold this rep

Yeah man, there are flaws in every "hero" and often some good intents in a lot of "villains". It's stupid to ignore the massive issues in guys like Lincoln, Gandhi, and Dr. King - the question shouldn't be whether they had their own personal issues or not, it should be whether they overcame those issues, or whether they managed to do good in spite of those issues, or whether those issues were secretly sinking them and making them not all they were cracked up to be. It is in THAT that we will learn anything, because we're flawed humans just like they are, and if we always make it out like the only people who did anything were perfect, then we ain't ever going to believe that we can do anything.


Here's a bit of a research shortcut for you.

One reason Ghandi's views begin to change was his experience of watching the Zulu fight the British in their rebellion in 1907:

From Mbeki: Mahatma Gandhi Satyagraha 100th Anniversary (01/10/2006)

"The Zulu 'rebellion' was full of new experiences and gave me much food for thought. The Boer War had not brought home to me the horrors of war with anything like the vividness that the 'rebellion' did. This was no war but a man-hunt. To hear every morning reports of the soldiers' rifles exploding like crackers in innocent Hamlets, and to live in the midst of them was a trial. But I swallowed the bitter draught, especially as the work of my Corps consisted only in nursing the wounded Zulus. I could see that but for us the Zulus would have been uncared for. This work, therefore, eased my conscience."

Enraged by such experiences, Gandhi decided to dedicate more of his life to the struggle for the liberation of all our people.

A lot more specifics come in this piece: http://www.codesria.org/IMG/pdf/Anil_Nauriya.pdf

More than two decades after the rebellion Gandhi was to recall to Rev. S S Tema, a member of the African National Congress: “I witnessed some of the horrors that were perpetrated on the Zulus during the Zulu Rebellion. Because one man, Bambatta, their chief, had refused to pay his tax, the whole race was made to suffer. I was in charge of an ambulance corps. I shall never forget the lacerated backs of Zulus who had received stripes and were brought to us for nursing because no white nurse was prepared to look after them. And yet those who perpetrated all those cruelties called themselves Christians. They were ‘educated’, better dressed than the Zulus, but not their moral superiors.” (January 1, 1939, CW, Vol 68, pp 273-274).

He was noting positively the struggles of other Black Africans fighting for freedom at that same time:

Gandhi did manage to make a brief record of, and draw some lessons from, the “excellent bravery” of the Moors whose struggles in North-Western Africa against the French and the Spanish were much in the news at the time (Indian Opinion, August 31, 1907, CW, Vol 7, p. 203). According to the press reports of one incident in Casablanca that reached Gandhi, the Moors made a “galloping charge”, paying “no heed to the shower of bullets and shell-splinters raining on them”, and such was their fervour that the French gunners did not have the heart to fire on such brave warriors” and instead “greeted them” and “clapped their hands in admiration” ; and the warriors thereupon “saluted them and turned back” (Idem) Whatever the veracity of the report, the idea had made an impression on Gandhi. “Such brave people” remarked Gandhi, “may be emulated by the whole world”.

And was reading anti-racist works by Finot and Schreiner

Finot’s work against racial prejudice had a significant impact on Gandhi ; it accelerated his transformation in South Africa from one who was seeking equality with Europeans to one who spoke in terms of equality for all. This is an element in the sources of his intellectual make-up that has not received adequate attention, even if Gandhi’s mind was already working in this direction. Gandhi had appreciated the Governor of Pondicherry in French India for his telling Indians : “A representative of the Republic is bound to regard all [citizens] as equals and there is only one thing between us, viz., the laws.” (Indian Opinion, April 27, 1907, CW, Vol 6, p. 439).6 Likewise, Gandhi had criticised the racist element in the jury system in South Africa. In June 1907 he had deprecated the trial of an African, Mtonga, and described the jury system in South Africa as “about the worst, that could be devised” and which left much to be desired especially “when the question is as between whites and blacks”. (Juries on Trial, Indian Opinion, June 1, 1907, CW, Vol 7, pp. 1-2) .

"In England and America, in France and Germany, and in the other civilised countries, it is the ‘anthropologists’ who have lent the most constant and active support to the false doctrines of caste and race ; but they are at last thoroughly discredited. Among others the French writer Finot, in his book ‘ Race Prejudice, ’ has shown the utterly untenable position of this pseudo-anthropology, even though it has filled thousands of volumes of more or less ‘scientific research’. The book has already had a remarkable reception, and must exert a great influence for the truth. It has the triple value of summing up the theories of race prejudice, of showing their essential futility, and of proving the fundamental unity of the human race.”

Soon after Gandhi’s release from prison, an article by Olive Schreiner appeared in The Transvaal Leader arguing against racial prejudice and envisaging a non-racist South Africa. It was then reprinted with some editorial appreciation in Gandhi’s journal. Schreiner wrote : “We cannot hope ultimately to equal the men of our own race living in more wholly enlightened and humanised communities, if our existence is passed among millions of non-free subjected peoples.” (‘ Olive Schreiner ’ on Colour, Indian Opinion, January 2, 1909).

In the same issue Gandhi’s journal expressed its admiration for Schreiner and enthusiastically endorsed her remarks. Like Finot, Olive Schreiner had made a deep impact on Gandhi. He would repeatedly refer to her lack of racial prejudice and made a specific reference to it at the session of the Indian National Congress in Kanpur (India) when Dr A Abdurahman attended it at the head of a delegation in 1925. Both Finot and Olive Schreiner were vital influences that entered into the transformation and broadening of outlook that Gandhi experienced in South Africa on the question of race, particularly from mid-1908.

After that period, his statements about his vision for the future of Africa included positive words of Black African freedom, equality, and integration:

“The election of the Rev. Dr Rubusana as a member of the Cape Provincial Council for Tembuland by a majority of 25 over his two opponents is an event of great importance. The election is really a challenge to the Union Parliament with reference to the colour clause. That Dr Rubusana can sit in the Provincial Council but not in the Union Parliament is a glaring anomaly which must disappear if South Africans are to become a real nation in the near future. We congratulate Dr Rubusana and the Coloured races on his victory and trust that his career in the Council will do credit to him and those he represents. ” (Indian Opinion, September 24, 1910, CW, Vol 10, p. 325)

Working among Indians in South Africa, Gandhi was aware of the wider African implications of his work, many of which had become visible before he left Africa in 1914...

Thus in July 1926 Gandhi wrote emphasising a vital axiom about the struggle against racial discrimination which set limits to how far Indian demands could be expected to be met in South Africa without a forward movement in that country as a whole: “I do not conceive the possibility of justice being done to Indians if none is rendered to natives of the soil”. (Young India, July 22, 1926, CW, Vol 31, p. 182)

he noticed racism rampant in England’s actions both within and without. Pointing to certain racial disabilities in Glasgow, Gandhi had made, earlier in the year, a world-wide projection of his concept of non-violent non-co-operation which he had, introduced in India in 1920. Citing the racial disabilities within Britain, he wrote : “ The question therefore that is agitating South Africa is not a local one but it is a tremendous world problem… There is however no hope of avoiding the catastrophe unless the spirit of exploitation that at present dominates the nations of the West is transmuted into that of real helpful service, or unless the Asiatic and African races understand that they cannot be exploited without their co-operation, to a large extent voluntary, and thus understanding, withdraw such co-operation ”. (Young India, March 18, 1926, CW, Vol 30, pp. 135-136)

By the turn of the decade, awareness of the movements and techniques of Gandhi, who had himself written early enough on Moroccan events, came to figure also in the struggles constitutive of Moroccan nationalism.29

Visiting England in 1931 he was to make it clear of those South African races who “are ground down under exploitation” that: “Our deliverance must mean their deliverance. But, if that cannot come about, I should have no interest in a partnership with Britain, even if it were of benefit to India.” (Young India, November 19, 1931, CW, Vol 48, p. 261).

“We hear nowadays a great deal of the segregation policy, as if it were possible to put people in water-tight compartments.” (Ibid. p. 243). In this speech Gandhi put forth his vision for the future South Africa : “If we look into the future, is it not a heritage we have to leave to posterity, that all the different races commingle and produce a civilisation that perhaps the world has not yet seen?”

"It may be that the English temperament is not responsive to a status of perfect equality with the black and the brown races. Then the English must be made to retire from India. But I am not prepared to reject the possibility of an honourable equality. The connection must end on the clearest possible proof that the English have hopelessly failed to realize the first principle of religion, namely, brotherhood of man.”

In a series of statements before the launch of the famous Quit India movement against British rule in 1942, Gandhi stressed that the Western powers must withdraw not only from India but also thereafter from Africa. In an article dated July 18, 1942, under the title “To Every Japanese”, Gandhi wrote : “Even if you win it will not prove that you were in the right ; it will only prove that your power of destruction was greater. This applies obviously to the Allies too, unless they perform now the just and righteous act of freeing India as an earnest and promise of similarly freeing all other subject peoples in Asia and Africa.”

Though cautious at this time about an amalgamated struggle, Gandhi provided a neat formula for mutual understanding. He declared that if Indian rights conflicted with African “vital interests”, he would “advise the forgoing of those rights” (Harijan, July 1, 1939, CW, Vol 69, p. 377).

A few months before the All India Congress Committee (AICC) of the Indian National Congress decided in 1942 upon the Quit India movement against British rule, Gandhi wrote an article entitled “To Every Briton”. In it he asked every Briton “to support me in my appeal to the British at this very hour to retire from every Asiatic and African possession and at least from India. That step is necessary for the destruction of Nazism and Fascism. In this I include Japan’s ‘ism’ also. It is a good copy of the two.”

On relations between India and Britain, Dr Privat noted : “ It is Gandhi’s dream to have a voluntary association between the two. If he still holds on to the link with Britain, as amongst equals, it is to save the coloured races. Canada dominates the English attitude towards America. Gandhi desires that India should similarly have her say in favour of the oppressed Africans. The liberation of his own country is only the first stage for him. He wishes then to use that power to deliver the others and to add… its moral conscience to the practical genius of the English. A united India would be able to put pressure like Canada under threat of separation. Imperialism and colonialism would have a decided enemy.

While on a peace mission in East Bengal, on February 28, 1947 Gandhi endorsed the decision of the African National Congress, the Coloured People’s Organisation, the Natal Indian Congress and the Transvaal Indian Congress in South Africa to refrain from assisting the celebrations of and to boycott a Royal visit to that country “ in view of the disabilities imposed upon the Asiatics and Africans and other Coloured people ”. He wrote : “ I take this opportunity of publicly endorsing the abstention as a natural and dignified step by any self-respecting body of people. ” (The Hindu, March 1, 1947, CW, Vol 87, p. 28).

Gandhi spoke directly to African-Americans about their struggles as well:

This denunciation was ratified by Gandhi, who had already criticised France a year earlier for its role in the Riff, the region on the north-eastern edge of the Atlas Range. Gandhi now followed with an article entitled “ Race Arrogance ” referring to information “ showing the wrong done by white Europe to the Abyssinians and the Riffs ” and pointing also to “ the injustice that is being daily perpetrated against the Negro in the United States of America in the name of and for the sake of maintaining white superiority ”. (Young India, October 14, 1926, CW, Vol 31, pp. 492-493).

Speaking to a delegation of African-Americans, including Dr Howard Thurman, Mrs Sue Thurman and Mr Carrol, the Pastor of Salem, in February 1936, Gandhi advised non-violent non-cooperation against any community indulging in lynchings: “I must not wish ill to these, but neither must I cooperate with them. It may be that ordinarily I depend upon the lynching community for my livelihood. I refuse to co-operate with them, refuse even to touch the food that comes from them, and I refuse to co-operate with my brother Negroes who tolerate the wrong. That is the self-immolation I mean. I have often in my life resorted to the plan.” (Harijan, March 14, 1936, CW, Vol 62, p. 201)

 

[Skooby]

Yall need to do like me and stop watching them pregame, half time and post game shows. shyt bad for your health as a black person.

Just watch the damn game and that is it.

Yep. I've been doing that for both NFL and NBA now for a couple of years. And I have enjoyed the games a lot better because of it.

 

[NoChillJones]

He made that statement so he wouldn't offend the white viewers. That makes him a coward in my book

The same white viewers who made Civil Rights a requirement in the first place right? People go out they way to shyt on black people, disassociate our struggle from America's, ignore prejudice and hate that we face, but will bend over back wards to consider the feelings of white Americans.......even the bold racist ones get treated with kid gloves, because we must be impartial......meanwhile its open season on blacks........

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Then there was his personal relationship with Black leaders across the world.

John Dube was neighbors with Gandhi, struggled alongside him for decades, was right there when Gandhi said the things that he said as well as when he started to change. S.S. Tema was close to Gandhi too.

W.E.B. DuBois corresponded with Gandhi for 30 years, specifically wrote about 1911 conference with Finot and paper from which Gandhi began learning about equality of all races, specifically asked Gandhi to write for Crisis.

George Washington Carver was in correspondence with Gandhi, as was Marcus Garvey, and they sent not only letters but even books back and forth to each other.

Gandhi also spoke quite positively of Booker T. Washington, John Tengo Jabavu, Marcus Garvey, Jomo Kenyatta, and Paul Robeson. He admired George Washington Carver and called him a genius, and the feeling was mutual. Langston Hughes followed Gandhi closely and wrote positively of him in his poetry. Hubert Harrison called Gandhi "the greatest, most unselfish and powerful leader of the modern world" and specifically wrote about the events in South Africa..but you think he was just ignorant.

“M.K Gandhi and John Dube, first President of the African National Congress were neighbours in Inanda, and each influenced the other, for both men established, at about the same time, two monuments to human development within a stone’s throw of each other, the Ohlange Institute and the Phoenix Settlement. Both institutions suffer today the trauma of the violence that has overtaken that region; hopefully, both will rise again, phoenix-like, to lead us to undreamed heights.”[Nelson Mandela, Gandhi The Prisoner: A Comparison, in B. R Nanda (ed.), Mahatma Gandhi: 125 Years, Indian Council of Cultural Relations, New Delhi, 1995, p. 8].

.



And he had a big impact on Black freedom movements:

From http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/The-African-Element-in-Gandhi.pdf

In South Africa Gandhiji evolved and matured from an upper class Indian professional to a political mass leader of Indians cutting across classes in their struggle against racial discrimination. In tandem with this evolution, he also came to envision, by the time of his Johannesburg speech on May 18, 1908, a multi-racial polity and society in South Africa. Gandhiji’s role as a pathfinder in relation to African struggles was combined with an emphasis on non-violence.

Although there were variations of technique and method over time and space, the “name of Gandhi has had repercussions” across Africa.... That Gandhiji’s philosophy and half-a-century long nonviolent and mass-based struggles against racial discrimination in South Africa and against colonial rule in India acted as an inspiration in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa is indicated also by the history of the collapse of colonial rule in various countries in Africa after India attained freedom. African leaders like Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, among others, have in some form or another, acknowledged Gandhiji as an inspiration. Even a leader like Joshua Nkomo of Zimbabwe, who found Gandhiji’s methods “not appropriate” to the “special national situation” in his country, nevertheless observes that Gandhiji’s movements were “an inspiration to us, showing that independence need not remain a dream”. [Nkomo (Joshua), The Story of My Life, Methuen, London, 1984, p. 73].

As one writer has put it: “Of all the Asian independence movements, the Indian movement has undoubtedly stirred the imagination of African nationalists the most. And it is not difficult to see why. First, there was the personality of Mahatma Gandhi. The message cabled by the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) on his death expressed the sentiments of all African nationalists, for whom Gandhi was the ‘bearer of the torch of liberty of oppressed peoples’ and whose life had been ‘an inspiration to colonials everywhere’.”

Gandhiji’s struggle and method inspired and interested African-Americans as well. This became evident as articles relating to him and his activities began to appear in African-American journals at least as early as 1919. Hubert Harrison and Dr W E B DuBois were among the prominent African-American intellectuals who began to write and speak about him at this time. Later Gandhiji’s method became a model for the African-American struggle under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., as is well known.

Dr W E B DuBois, the inspiration behind the Pan-African movement, referred to Gandhi in the context of resolving racial conflict especially in the American South: “If we …. solve our antithesis; great Gandhi lives again. If we cannot civilise the South, or will not even try, we continue in contradiction and riddle.” [W E B DuBois, Will the Great Gandhi Live Again?, National Guardian, February 11, 1957, in David Levering Lewis (ed.), W E B DuBois: A Reader, Henry **** & Company, New York, 1995, p. 360 ].

He wrote that it may well be that “real human equality and brotherhood in the United States will come only under the leadership of another Gandhi.” (W E B DuBois, Gandhi and the American Negroes, Gandhi Marg, Bombay, July 1957, Vol 1, Number 3, p.177).

In a 1956 preface to his autobiography, Kwame Nkrumah wrote: “After months of studying Gandhi’s policy, and watching the effect that it had, I began to see that, when backed by a strong political organisation it could be the solution to the colonial problem.” (The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Nelson & Sons, Edinburgh, 1959, p. vi).

As late as the end of the sixties, the West African nationalist pioneer, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe wrote in the light of his own experience: “On Gandhi’s The African Element in Gandhi www.mkgandhi.org Page 104 teachings of satyagraha, history has proved Gandhi right.” (Nnamdi Azikiwe, My Odyssey: An Autobiography, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1970, p. 274)

Gandhi’s influence in Africa, such as it was, appeared to cut across nations, races, linguistic areas and religions. Among his most ardent students, for example, was Nigeria’s Aminu Kano. A devout Muslim, Aminu Kano, according to his biographer, “analysed Gandhi’s success in lifting millions of Indians to a high level of dedication and endeavoured to adapt Gandhi’s non-violent techniques to Northern Nigeria”. (Alan Feinstein, African Revolutionary: The Life and Times of Nigeria’s Aminu Kano, Davison Publishing House, Devizes, Wiltshire, 1973, pp. 143-144) Kano came, at least according to one source, to be referred to as the “Gandhi of Nigeria” (Idem). A progressive Muslim, Aminu Kano took several initiatives for social reform.

There's more than a hundred pages of that stuff in that link - I could only quote a little bit. It thoroughly refutes the idea that Gandhi stayed racist as he matured, or that a few ignorant statments he made in his 20s should somehow define him for life.