2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: If MLK Were Alive, He'd Make White Folks Just as Uncomfortable as Black Lives Matter [View all]Kentonio
(4,377 posts)So you think a young black person born long after King was murdered has a better understanding of MLK and the civil rights movement than a white person who lived through that time? Why is that exactly?
I can definitely go along with them having a far better understanding of racial discrimination (obviously) but when you get into historical figures and how society worked at that time, there is generally no better source than having been there.
Just speaking as a history nerd, people usually don't understand history very well, and make assumptions based on the world as they know it, rather than the world as it was then. That isn't an attack on anyone, but it is sadly true. It's incredibly hard to live in a relatively peaceful time and really understand what it was like to live through a wildly turbulent period of history. When you talk about people 'lecturing', perhaps its worth finding out what their relevant experiences are first, because there are people here (not me I want to make clear) that were actually there at the time, and their experiences and knowledge should not be written off so cheaply.