“I used to wonder,” King asked himself, “who would I be, if I were alive in the civil rights movement? Would I be a freedom fighter? Would I be an organizer? Would I be radical? Or, would I stand by and do nothing? Would I march, would I protest, would I sit in? What would I do? I’ve asked this question to some elders in the civil rights movement, and they said, ‘Shaun, I don’t really know who you would be because many of us didn’t know who we would be until we were faced with it.’ What they schooled me on is, they said, ‘Shaun, you don’t really have to go back in time to wonder who you would be. The second half of King’s lecture focused on his experience with Black Lives Matter and student activism. Because if human beings had really gotten better and better, how can we explain slavery? How can we explain the Holocaust?” When he unfolded humanity over time, he found that humans looked more like a series of great peaks and dramatic valleys. “But as he broke down humanity, what he found was that human beings weren’t getting better, only their gadgets were. It was his own historical version of the theory of evolution,” King said. “It was understanding that humanity was getting better and better over time. King discussed many of these cycles through history, including slavery and the civil rights movement. He explained that humans go through cycles of using these advances for the benefit of society or to its detriment. Yeah, Donald Trump's a bigot, but Senate Democrats aren't far behind.Writer and activist Shaun King spoke Wednesday night in the Johnson Chapel at Amherst College to a crowd of approximately 400 students and community members.Īccording to the event’s Facebook page, the event was hosted by Amherst College Democrats and co-sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Center, the Multicultural Resource Center, the Muslim Student Association, La Causa and Roosevelt at Amherst.Īlthough King is known for his written pieces for the New York Daily News and The Intercept covering police brutality and race in America, this speech dealt primarily with the theme of humanity.ĭuring his speech, King frequently cited German historian Leopold von Ranke, who he called “the father of the study of history.” According to King, von Ranke challenged the idea that humanity ethically progressed over time, and instead demonstrated that technology and science improved many aspects of human life. They will film promo videos featuring black victims of police brutality and racial violence and trot out Mothers of the Movement all across the country, but how much do Senate Democrats truly value black folk if they don't have a single black chief of staff? How much do Senate Democrats honestly and earnestly value African-Americans if less than 1% of their senior staff members are black? They will visit black colleges and hold pep rallies. They will appear on the radio with Charlamagne, Steve Harvey and Tom Joyner to drum up black support. What I know is this - when it comes to winning elections and defeating Donald Trump, these same Democrats who refuse to hire black folk for senior management, will want Beyoncé, Jay Z, Oprah and Chance the Rapper to stand on stage with them. This is a scandal that must be immediately and proactively addressed by Democratic Party and the United States Senate.
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