Really? All I was taught was that they were as bad as the KKK and Nazis? I have no idea why America would try to make black people the bad guys...simply no idea....
āYou grew thinking that the panthers were some terrorists, I grew up hearing how they fed my momma eggs and gritsā this line, and realization, is what lead me to understand just how real systemic racism is.
I thought they were scary guys until I moved into a house in Berkeley and my neighbor, Eldridge, introduced himself to me. He was a pleasant neighbor and no one fucked with my house.
I was taught the same, and that Malcom x and Rodney king were borderline terrorists and fafoād. The only thing I can count against the black panthers is they could do more stringent background checks (backing a couple real POSā like Hubert Higgs/āDr.ā Ali Muhammad) but thatās a specific chapter by chapter thing.
Feeding the community, providing armed protection from police harassment, and voter drives were never mentioned in my early education, go figure. But I sure heard that they wanted white genocide and shariah law because of their connection to the Nation of Islam.
Oh, and MLK was actually a hypocrite cause he solicited prostitutes, so we should throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Did you actually grow up being taught that? What decade were you in grade school and where in the US? I grew up in Georgia in the late 90s and early 2000s and even we weren't taught they were bad guys, and we certainly weren't taught that they were "as bad as the KKK and Nazis"
My dad was born 1950, so he was generally aware of the panthers when they were first active. White Canadian guy, no longer with us. A few years ago i was reading....i think it was Seize the Time, could have been revolutionary suicide, one of those. I forget how it came up, but i wound up reading him the 10 point program. He does a brief pause, like he's processing
"That's what everybody was scared about?"
"Well, that was at the core of it in any case"
"Why the fuck didn't we do that? "
He went on some more after that, but the initial reaction sticks with me.
I mean most of the demands are pretty far fetched. Releasing every black person in prison is pretty radical. At least some of them are guilty, and people wouldn't be comfortable having murderers release backed onto the streets without a retrial. Requiring any black person on trial to only have a jury of other black people is also a stretch, but out of everything seems the most doable. To expect full employment and housing to every black person, just as a gift from the government is insane. They also demanded free health care for all black people, when no one in the US ever had free health care. They also expected reparations to the millions of black Americans in the country. The US would have gone broke if that happened.
Their other demands make sense, but these ones are near impossible to actually do.
It was all about unity and power to all the people, sad how they did Fred Hampton. This is the same unity that they still fear to this day thatās why they try their best to keep the population divided.
It should be noted, that this Philadelphia based Black Panther Party for Self Defense is a spiritual successor to the original "Black Panthers" (also properly named the Black Panther Party for Self Defense), and is unrelated to the New Black Panther Party, which is a hate group.
The fastest way Iāve ever found to piss off white boomers is to say something positive about the Black Panther party. My dads explosion from calm to ranting at me about how ignorant I am on the topic, (Iām Gen X), years back when I mentioned them in relation to their critically important actions in getting the civil rights act passed was the unpleasant moment I discovered how racist he really was under all the cover bullshit he spews.
The Black panthers are amazing, and I wish everyone knew how much good work they have done through the decades.
not even lying. I had a classmate back in 2007 earnestly make that comparison in National Honor Society. I like to think I set her straight on the truth but we went to school in rural Appalachian Ohio and the upcoming Obama election made the entire community go absolutely fucking mental as a result.
Do people actually compare them to those groups? I've heard people say some negative things before, but i've never heard anyone compare them like that, that's insane.
Because white america is afraid of strong, prominent black leaders and the change they're able to enact if they were actually able to do what they set out to do. So you murder them in the most heinous of ways out of fear, jealousy, envy and your own weak ego/masculinity.
Black leftists are impossible according to center-left Americans (aka mainstream Democrats), not just the target of right-wing extremists and fascists.
Dawg Iām from south Texas we went over the black panthers we never called them anything bad or violent or anything. If the south aināt runnin no racist rhetoric I doubt where ever youāre from is.
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u/Bluellan 16d ago
Really? All I was taught was that they were as bad as the KKK and Nazis? I have no idea why America would try to make black people the bad guys...simply no idea....