Throwback 2020: What The Sixties Tell Us About Now
I loved it when I heard Chris Cuomo say, “HELTER SKELTER” while attacking Trump last week. I had recently encouraged the media and liberal politicians on what I call Team America to compare Trump to Charles Manson. They’re both cult leaders trying to start a race war. The difference is most of Manson’s cultists were women carrying knives while most of Trump’s are men carrying guns. As I watch in horror the events of this first year of the twenties, I keep being reminded of the sixties. We can understand what’s happening now if we remember (those of us old enough and still sane enough to remember) the events of that “HELTER SKELTER” decade.
Some people may have forgotten how the now revered Reverend Martin Luther King and his disciple John Lewis were treated back in the sixties. Just as the BlackLivesMatter activists are being called anarchists and terrorists by white supremacists like Trump and his enabler/protecter AG Bill Barr, King and Lewis were called outside agitators (they were both born in the South) and Communists during the early years of the civil rights movement. And just as three white people have been killed while protesting racism (four if we count the Antifa guy who killed a white supremacist and then was killed by the police), several whites participating in the civil rights movement were killed in the sixties.
The behavior of the twenties police has also been similar to that of notorious sixties racist bullies like Bull Connor from Alabama. Although they’ve yet to use the vicious dogs that white supremacist Trump threatened to employ, nor have they used water hoses, these 21st Century “law and order” bullies have more dangerous weapons. Who needs dogs when they have tasers and rubber bullets? And who needs water when they have gas and pepper spray? They don’t need horses either (although I believe I saw some in Washington, D.C.) because they can use their jeeps and tanks to intimidate and even injure the peaceful protesters. And unlike the sixties killer cops, the twenties cops don’t hide in the dark and kill black folks and their allies when no one’s watching. They kill them in broad daylight, sometimes when they know they’re being filmed. The cop who killed George Floyd with a knee to the neck stared into a cellphone camera like Norma Desmond ready for her closeup. We thought the sixties cops who brutally beat John Lewis and the other peaceful protesters in Selma were bold and bad, attacking preachers and women with the whole world watching, but these twenties racist cops put the “b” in bad, bold, and brutal. Even after the worldwide demonstrations against police brutality targeting black people, even after BLACKLIVESMATTER finally went viral, with celebrities, politicians, and even businesses joining the movement, a cop in Kenosha, Wisconsin shot a black man in the back seven times in broad daylight, with three of the man’s children and several adults watching. Forget Bull Connor! These twenties cops act like they’re in the Mafia.
Among the celebrities who have joined the BLM movement are athletes. Male and female basketball players refused to play after Jacob Blake was shot in Kenosha, and tennis, football, and baseball players have followed their lead, cancelling games, wearing the names of black people murdered by cops on their uniforms, and painting BlackLivesMatter on equipment or the floor of the arenas where they play. Even more important, some of them, including star basketball player LeBron James, are working on getting out the vote. James and the other activist athletes are running in the footsteps of Muhammad Ali, who refused to fight in the Vietnam War, as well as football player Jim Brown, tennis player Arthur Ashe, and basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who all refused to shut up and play. In fact, the long retired Kareem is still active in racial politics, writing opinion columns and sounding off on television. But just as the athletes who are protesting now are being criticized for their actions, with the football fans booing as the two teams linked arms last week as a show of solidarity in the fight for racial justice and disgusting rich jerks like Wannabe Prince Jared Kushner commenting on how much money they make, the sixties athletes also paid a price for their activism. Jim and Kareem weren’t as popular and didn’t make as much money as the apolitical OJ Simpson and Magic Johnson. And Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the two track stars who staged a silent protest by raising their black-gloved fists during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics while the national anthem was playing, were vilified as much as former quarterback Colin Kaepernick was for kneeling during that same phony (“land of the free,” my black, descendant of slaves behind, and this was the home of the braves—the Indians—until white folks stole it), racist anthem.
Many of those who still can’t accept the truth about systemic racism like to point out how much progress has been made since the civil rights movement started in the late fifties, and they’re right. There were no black female mayors and police chiefs during the sixties. There also weren’t as many black folks in the House of Representatives or in state legislatures. Now we have a black woman chairing the Finance Committee, and a black man is the Majority Whip. Obama, our first (half-) black President, is the most admired man in our nation and probably the world. And soon (if Trump and his Republican and Russian allies don’t cheat) we will have a black and Asian female Vice President. We also have more black people in mainstream journalism. Lester Holt, for instance, is the anchor of NBC News. But we still have Fox News, where the once seemingly reasonable conservative Tucker Carlson has become a white supremacist, and there are multiple conservative radio hosts who don’t mind flying their racist flags.
What the sixties tell us about today is that we can get through these troubled, chaotic times, and progress will be made. Except for those fighting (and dying) during the last years of the Vietnam War, the seventies were a great time to be black! But what 2020 tells us is that the bad times will return. We may never overcome racism and reach the figurative mountain top that Reverend King talked about the night before he was assassinated. But some of us will survive and keep fighting. We will go up the mountain, moving nearer to the top, fall (or be pushed) down, and then start back up again. Let’s keep climbing.
Some people may have forgotten how the now revered Reverend Martin Luther King and his disciple John Lewis were treated back in the sixties. Just as the BlackLivesMatter activists are being called anarchists and terrorists by white supremacists like Trump and his enabler/protecter AG Bill Barr, King and Lewis were called outside agitators (they were both born in the South) and Communists during the early years of the civil rights movement. And just as three white people have been killed while protesting racism (four if we count the Antifa guy who killed a white supremacist and then was killed by the police), several whites participating in the civil rights movement were killed in the sixties.
The behavior of the twenties police has also been similar to that of notorious sixties racist bullies like Bull Connor from Alabama. Although they’ve yet to use the vicious dogs that white supremacist Trump threatened to employ, nor have they used water hoses, these 21st Century “law and order” bullies have more dangerous weapons. Who needs dogs when they have tasers and rubber bullets? And who needs water when they have gas and pepper spray? They don’t need horses either (although I believe I saw some in Washington, D.C.) because they can use their jeeps and tanks to intimidate and even injure the peaceful protesters. And unlike the sixties killer cops, the twenties cops don’t hide in the dark and kill black folks and their allies when no one’s watching. They kill them in broad daylight, sometimes when they know they’re being filmed. The cop who killed George Floyd with a knee to the neck stared into a cellphone camera like Norma Desmond ready for her closeup. We thought the sixties cops who brutally beat John Lewis and the other peaceful protesters in Selma were bold and bad, attacking preachers and women with the whole world watching, but these twenties racist cops put the “b” in bad, bold, and brutal. Even after the worldwide demonstrations against police brutality targeting black people, even after BLACKLIVESMATTER finally went viral, with celebrities, politicians, and even businesses joining the movement, a cop in Kenosha, Wisconsin shot a black man in the back seven times in broad daylight, with three of the man’s children and several adults watching. Forget Bull Connor! These twenties cops act like they’re in the Mafia.
Among the celebrities who have joined the BLM movement are athletes. Male and female basketball players refused to play after Jacob Blake was shot in Kenosha, and tennis, football, and baseball players have followed their lead, cancelling games, wearing the names of black people murdered by cops on their uniforms, and painting BlackLivesMatter on equipment or the floor of the arenas where they play. Even more important, some of them, including star basketball player LeBron James, are working on getting out the vote. James and the other activist athletes are running in the footsteps of Muhammad Ali, who refused to fight in the Vietnam War, as well as football player Jim Brown, tennis player Arthur Ashe, and basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who all refused to shut up and play. In fact, the long retired Kareem is still active in racial politics, writing opinion columns and sounding off on television. But just as the athletes who are protesting now are being criticized for their actions, with the football fans booing as the two teams linked arms last week as a show of solidarity in the fight for racial justice and disgusting rich jerks like Wannabe Prince Jared Kushner commenting on how much money they make, the sixties athletes also paid a price for their activism. Jim and Kareem weren’t as popular and didn’t make as much money as the apolitical OJ Simpson and Magic Johnson. And Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the two track stars who staged a silent protest by raising their black-gloved fists during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics while the national anthem was playing, were vilified as much as former quarterback Colin Kaepernick was for kneeling during that same phony (“land of the free,” my black, descendant of slaves behind, and this was the home of the braves—the Indians—until white folks stole it), racist anthem.
Many of those who still can’t accept the truth about systemic racism like to point out how much progress has been made since the civil rights movement started in the late fifties, and they’re right. There were no black female mayors and police chiefs during the sixties. There also weren’t as many black folks in the House of Representatives or in state legislatures. Now we have a black woman chairing the Finance Committee, and a black man is the Majority Whip. Obama, our first (half-) black President, is the most admired man in our nation and probably the world. And soon (if Trump and his Republican and Russian allies don’t cheat) we will have a black and Asian female Vice President. We also have more black people in mainstream journalism. Lester Holt, for instance, is the anchor of NBC News. But we still have Fox News, where the once seemingly reasonable conservative Tucker Carlson has become a white supremacist, and there are multiple conservative radio hosts who don’t mind flying their racist flags.
What the sixties tell us about today is that we can get through these troubled, chaotic times, and progress will be made. Except for those fighting (and dying) during the last years of the Vietnam War, the seventies were a great time to be black! But what 2020 tells us is that the bad times will return. We may never overcome racism and reach the figurative mountain top that Reverend King talked about the night before he was assassinated. But some of us will survive and keep fighting. We will go up the mountain, moving nearer to the top, fall (or be pushed) down, and then start back up again. Let’s keep climbing.
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