 |
|
|
 Editorials | Opinions | October 2007 
Sharing the Civil Rights Movement
 Sharon Woodson-Bryant - LA Wave
go to original
| | Top left: Elvira Arellano; Top right: Malcolm X; Bottom left: Martin Luther King, Jr.; Bottom right: Rosa Parks |
It is amazing what effect thousands of black people all demanding justice can have. Now, it looks as if Washington is finally paying attention to what is happening in Jena, La. After the show of strength Sept. 20, the House Judiciary Committee, led by Detroit Rep. John Conyers, is set to hold hearings on the incidents.
Even President George W. Bush commented that “the events in Louisiana had saddened” him. But when you study his following words you find them deliberately ambiguous: “I understand the emotions. The Justice Department and the FBI are monitoring the situation down there. And all of us in America want there to be, you know, fairness when it comes to justice,” Bush said.
With the show of strength and solidarity, the march in Jena brought new life to the civil rights movement and was an echo of the civil rights protests of the 1960s. Martin Luther King III said the scene was reminiscent of the earlier struggles and the Rev. Al Sharpton said this could be the beginning of the 21st century’s civil rights movement.
But wait, there seems to be some confusion. Last year we were told that a “reinvigorated civil rights movement was spreading across the nation with more than a million people marching for less-stringent U.S. immigration policies.” These groups claimed that the protests against proposed immigration reforms marked the rise of a new American civil rights movement.
Positioning herself as a poster child for the movement was Elvira Arellano, the single mother caught here illegally using someone else’s Social Security number. Arellano had taken up sanctuary in Chicago for the past year and started using icons of the civil rights movement — first Rosa Parks, then Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X — to justify her decision to break immigration laws. Her picture was splashed across the media was a photo of her with Jesse Jackson’s wife shown in support of her cause.
She was eventually arrested and deported to Mexico but did anyone hear a peep from the Mexican Rosa Parks when the buses were pulling into Jena?
So are there two civil rights movements going on in this country? Or do the illegal immigrant groups simply want to put civil rights and the black struggle in their hip pockets to be pulled out only when they need moral support?
If this is not the case, then the representatives from the immigrant’s civil rights movement should have been marching in Louisiana. If these immigrant groups are going to jump on the back of the black movement then at least be gracious enough to make a public statement of support while we are carrying the load.
In my history book, the civil rights movement was essentially a struggle for the establishment of basic human rights for African-Americans in the United States. These were the people whose blood, sweat and tears helped build the country since their arrival in the 17th century as slaves, who had been kidnapped by white Europeans from their homes in Africa and brought to the country against their will to work as slave labor.
I don’t get how some people can feel entitled enough to claim this struggle as their own like buying a Burger King franchise. Our legacy isn’t a label that can be worn only when politically convenient and then dropped by these so-called disciples when the movement takes another direction or, in this case, gets back to its roots.
The case of the Jena Six has served as a wake-up call on the state of U.S. justice. It shows dramatically how racial bias is still inherent to our system. But it also shows how a group of families refused to be silent in the face of injustice, and that hundreds of thousands of other people around the world have chosen to stand with them, and say that we are drawing the line, here, in Jena. This is the heart and soul of the real civil rights movement.
Sharon Woodson-Bryant is a Wave columnist and can be reached at woodson-bryant@hotmail.com. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us