In 1986, Bruce Hornsbury and his band, the Range, recorded the biggest hit he has had to date, "The Way It Is". It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1986.The song described
aspects of homelessness, the American
civil rights movement and institutional
racism. It has since been sampled by at least six rap artists,
including Tupac Shakur, E-40, and Mase.
For reasons I’ll never understand, it popped into my head
today.
Although the song itself is more than 30 years old, it is
extremely relevant to today’s society, since there is a great deal of controversy
about something called “critical race theory”, which is a 40-year-old academic
study that examines the effect that systematic racism has had on
our society.
The civil rights era, arguably, started in 1948, when Harry
Truman desegregated the military, but it was preceded by Jackie Robinson’s 1947
hiring by Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Rosa Parks and Emmet
Till followed in 1955, then the Greensboro sit-in in 1960, the 1961 Freedom
Riders, Martin Luther King’s speech in 1963, and “bloody Sunday” in Selma in
1965.
Bruce
Hornsby & The Range - The Way It Is (Official Video) - YouTube
Martin Luther King’s assassination led to the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, which was signed into law on July 2, 1964, roughly 3 months after MLK
was assassinated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
After the March on Selma turned into “Bloody Sunday”,
President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on August 3, 1965.
About 1:30 into the song, Hornsby sings, “hey little boy, you
can’t go where the others go”. This is what he was talking about:
1)
It wasn’t until 1949, the African-Americans were
allowed to use swimming pools and the Chicago lakeshore alongside white people.
In the late 1940s there were major
swimming pool riots in St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.
Whites threw nails at the bottom of pools in Cincinnati,
poured bleach and acid in pools with black bathers in St. Augustine, Florida,
and beat them up in Philadelphia.
3) Even today, realtors in a variety of cities don’t show potential black buyers houses in the “white section” of some cities.
·
A 2021 analysis of marijuana-related arrests in 2020 in New York
City’s five boroughs reported that people of color comprised 94 percent of
those arrested.
·
A 2021 analysis from the Milwaukee
County, Wisconsin District Attorney’s Office reported that Black Wisconsinites
were 4.3 times more likely than their white counterparts to be convicted for
having marijuana. The worst disparities in Wisconsin are in Ozaukee County,
where Black people are 34.9 times more likely to be arrested and Manitowoc
County, where Black people are 29.9 times more likely to be arrested.”
·
A 2020 analysis by the American Civil
Liberties Union, concluded, “Black people are 3.64 times more likely than white
people to be arrested for marijuana possession, notwithstanding comparable
usage rates.” Authors reported, “In every single state, Black people were more
likely to be arrested for marijuana possession, and in some states, Black
people were up to six, eight, or almost ten times more likely to be arrested.
In 31 states, racial disparities were actually larger in 2018 than they were in
2010.”
·
https://norml.org/marijuana/fact-sheets/racial-disparity-in-marijuana-arrests/
More
people died from police violence in 2017 than the total number of U.S. soldiers killed in action around
the globe). More people died at the hands of police in 2017 than the number of
black people who were lynched in the worst year of Jim Crow (161 in 1892).
Cops killed more Americans in 2017 than terrorists did
(four). They killed more citizens than airplanes (13 deaths worldwide),
mass shooters (428
deaths) and Chicago’s “top gang thugs” (675
Chicago homicides).
In 2021, State lawmakers have enacted nearly two dozen laws
since the 2020 election that restrict ballot access, according to a new tally
by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.
These
22 laws in 14 states mark a new record for restrictive voting laws since 2011,
when the Brennan Center recorded 19 laws enacted in 14 state legislatures.
Most of
the new laws make it harder to vote absentee and by mail, after a record number
of Americans voted by mail in November. The people who will now find it harder
to vote are Hispanics, African-Americans, and native Americans.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/28/politics/voter-suppression-restrictive-voting-bills/index.html
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2020/09/
The only question that matters is whether candidates for
public office agree with the Republican National Committee that the events of
January 6 were “legitimate political discourse”. If they can’t answer this
question correctly, then they are not qualified to hold public office.
That’s just the way it is.
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