At noon on Monday May 13th 1968, Robert Kennedy gave a speech at Creighton, a Jesuit university in Omaha, Nebraska. He was running for US president and the Nebraska Democratic Party primary was the next day.
The quadrangle: It was hot and sunny. He took off his jacket, standing in shirtsleeves. About 4,000 students showed up, lying on the grass of the quadrangle and sitting on windowsills. The students were largely White and middle-class.
The draft: At that time the Vietnam War was at its height, but men who went to university could put off getting drafted into the war by getting a student deferment. (Donald Trump was doing just that at the time – while John McCain was by then a prisoner of war, his plane having been shot down seven months before.)
Robert Kennedy said he would replace student deferments with a lottery. The students booed him.
He asked for a show of hands who believed in student deferments. Most students raised their hands.
Kennedy:
“How can you possibly say …. Look around you. How many Black faces do you see here? How many American Indians? How many Mexican Americans? The fact is, if you look at any regiment or division of paratroopers in Vietnam, 45% of them are Black. How can you accept that?”
More boos.
“What I don’t understand is that you don’t even debate these things among yourselves. You’re the most exclusive minority in the world. Are you going to sit on your duffs and do nothing? Or just carry signs and protest?”
Someone stood up and asked:
“But isn’t the army one way of getting people out of the ghettos … and solving the ghetto problem?”
Huh? Kennedy could not believe what he was hearing. Kennedy, who was himself Catholic, said:
“Here, at a Catholic university, how can you say that we can deal with the problems of the poor by sending them to Vietnam?
“There is a great moral force in the United States about the wrongs of the Federal Government and all the mistakes [President] Lyndon Johnson has made, and how Congress has failed to pass legislation dealing with civil rights. And yet, when it comes down to yourselves and your own individual lives, then you say students should be draft-deferred.”
This was not an abstract issue for him. His oldest brother, Joseph, died fighting for the country in the Second World War. His older brother, John, died while serving as president. He thought the Vietnam War was immoral, but love of country meant equality of sacrifice.
His next stop was a rally in front of his campaign headquarters at 24th and Erskine in the heart of Omaha’s Near North Side, a Black ghetto. As his motorcade drove into the ghetto it began to rain, but he kept the car top down so people could see him and touch him. When they turned the corner he saw a thousand people waiting in the downpour. He shouted, “These are my people!”
A month later he was dead.
– Abagond, 2018.
Sources: mainly “The Last Campaign” (2008) by Thurston Clarke.
See also:
- Robert Kennedy
- The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr – just the month before
- John McCain
- Donald Trump
- Vietnam War
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In addition to the racial imbalance in the Vietnam-era military, there was also a major income imbalance. Eighty percent of soldiers came from low-income families!
Until 1971, many soldiers couldn’t even vote, because the minimum age was 21. Talk about a lack of privilege! “You’re old enough to be a dead body for us, but not old enough to be a respected voice in our society.” Not only was the US government disregarding the Vietnamese people’s right to self-determination, they were denying that right to some of their most burdened citizens as well.
The current absence of a student draft deferment that extends beyond a semester is probably one of the biggest reasons why no president has held a draft since the Vietnam War. When Congress abolished the student deferment in 1971, they inadvertently strengthened the Vietnam protest movement and helped to eventually end the war.
If the draft were reinstated in the future, the fastest way to end it would probably be to amend the Selective Service law so that women would be included. Women would be horrified, and men would be insulted! Bye-bye, draft.
“love of country meant equality of sacrifice”
Maybe equality isn’t always enough. Sometimes the people with more privilege also have a responsibility to give more back to society: proportionality of sacrifice instead of equality. As Bobby’s brother Jack would have said, “Of those to whom much is given, much is required.” Unfortunately, our current Social Security and Medicare tax policies do not reflect that philosophy, since people with the top 0.1 percent of income pay only about a fifth as much as the average American! In some ways, our society is even more in need of reform than it was in the Vietnam era.
Maybe Bobby’s grandson Joe will be able to move beyond Congress and lead the country in a new direction. I just read that Bernie’s son Levi is running for Congress in New Hampshire, which could be the start of something great too.
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Very interesting subject. Beginning with the Korean War blacks were being integrated into a previous all white military (Army) with a few black units.
The Vietnam War made it possible for many blacks to rise to the top of the chain of command.
Do not kick success!
I get your point; however, you must remember history. During World War II the whites did not want blacks to be a part of the military.
Throughout history the poor have made up the ranks of the military with officers being supplied from the “elite”.
See the Civil war where millions of poor whites died to preserve slavery for 8% of the population (few rich slave owners) to own slaves.
How many white people (the North) died to: end slavery or save the Union, whichever you choose to say?
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html
Blacks are gaining in economic power, academic achievements and are merging into the mainstream. The importance of education, ability to communicate and willingness to “put your best foot forward” are the ingredients of success. Job opportunity and willingness to move to the jobs helps.
The majority of blacks are in 9 states in the south east where there is a very low high quality job expectation.
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@ Allen Shaw
*”Blacks are gaining in economic power, academic achievements and are merging into the mainstream. The importance of education, ability to communicate and willingness to “put your best foot forward” are the ingredients of success. Job opportunity and willingness to move to the jobs helps.
The majority of blacks are in 9 states in the south east where there is a very low high quality job expectation.”*
Still wearing those rose-colored glasses, huh?
It is amazing that an otherwise intelligent and experienced Black person can see other Black people:
✔︎ muscled out of traditional neighborhoods in a variety of cities (gentrification)
✔︎ stuffed into prisons (many in for 25 to life for a few ounces of weed)
✔︎ systematically denied education through charter school schemes and teaching to standardized tests by Teach For America hacks
✔︎ brutalized or murdered by the police on the daily news for the entertainment of White people
✔︎ lose more than half their wealth in the mortgage swindle of the early 2000s, resulting in a financial meltdown that wrecked the economy
✔︎ be aware of the loss of many HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) through closures and White student takeovers
✔︎ endure the loss of huge numbers of Black women in pregnancy and childbirth
http://www.latimes.com/world/global-development/la-na-texas-black-maternal-mortality-2017-htmlstory.html
✔︎ lose ground in every aspect of American life with an increase in chronic stress
and still proclaim the current time is alive with rainbows and unicorns!
Allen Shaw, step outside of your “1971 progress bubble” and discover more about the facts of life for the majority of Black people nationwide in the here and now.
Wishing won’t make it so…..
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Wow.
Extraordinary.
Thank you so much!!
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Beautiful words!
The Kennedy clan was outstanding during an era in American politics.
My father – down here in Africa, in a Portuguese colony – would speak positively about them, with passion.
These were White politicians, White persons who were ready to do sacrifices, and in some cases, the ultimate sacrifice to help Black people. Something we couldn’t see that oft! Whatever their natural human limitations, they were remarkable!
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@ Afrofem
I just read your last comment.
I feel you are being too harsh on Allen Shaw.
Probably your assessment of the current problems facing Blacks in USA is correct but I understood that Allen Shaw tried only to show that despite the obvious racial disparity on enlisting of American troops for the Vietnam war, fact is that, that process helped, ultimately, to open new avenues for Black progress.
Some people have a word for this apparent contradiction: dialectics, whereby negative and positive features in a process feed each other, enabling ultimately development.
I think your observations are correct when it comes to an assessment of current trends in American society, but so are Shaw’s views of some of the progress Blacks made decades ago and the factors that influenced that progress.
Just a humble opinion from an outside observer of American society!
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Wow.
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“Just a humble opinion from an outside observer of American society!” – munubantu
With this sentence in mind, you should’ve posted at the very beginning of your post, which in turn could’ve prevented you from posting everything else that followed. Most relevant was “outside observer.”
I usually do not agree with Afrofem but I must say that her post was quite astute and right on point! The days of acknowledging crumbs that were strategically shoved off of the table, only to pacify us are long gone.
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@ munubantu
Thank you for your considered opinion. Your central point re: dialectics is well taken.
My point is that Allen Shaw is stuck in a time warp. How did you phrase it:
“…Shaw’s views of some of the progress Blacks made decades ago…”. Progress was made decades ago. However, with some cosmetic modifications, that progress has been reversed.
Life on the ground for Black people in the USA is precarious and worsening on a yearly basis. No Black person in the USA, no matter our level of education or affluence, etc. is free from the threat of violence or actual violence. It could come without warning from White, Asian, Latinx, Arab or Black citizens or from agents of the State (e.g. the police).
Neoliberal economic policies are making everyday life in the States harsher. The media functions as an alternate reality to divert and distract people from the effects of those economic policies. That is in addition to the ever present burden of the racial hierarchy that leaves every Black person who is fully awakened suffused with rage.
Mary Burrell posted a James Baldwin quote on the Open Thread recently:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/open-thread/#comment-396875
That is as true today in 2018 as it was in the 1960s when Baldwin uttered or wrote those words. I would say it is even more true today when Black people are considered a surplus population within a racist, capitalist system that finds undocumented immigrants easier to exploit as a reserve labor force than Black people.
There is a tremendous amount of stress and tension present in the Black community of the USA and in the entire population of the USA. That tension in fueling deep divisions among Americans. It could lead to (yet another) genocide event in the near future.
Yet…
I know that Black people are incredible survivors; strong, resilient, creative and adaptable. That gives me hope. Sometimes, I think of the Klan beatings, burnings and murders that were occurring just miles from my home during my childhood. I’m now aware of the incredible energy my parents and grandparents made to create a “normal” childhood for my siblings and I in the midst of that organized terror. I think that if they could endure so much and contribute so much, then I can also endure and contribute.
Allen Shaw seems like an intelligent person who has applied himself in this life and reaped the rewards of that diligence. That I respect about him. He is also utterly clueless about the lived reality of millions of his fellow Black citizens. That reality is shocking and depressing. His outdated rhetoric is infuriating because I feel he should know better.
Just shows that Black people are not a monolithic group.
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@blakksage
@Afrofem:
Doing what God loves telling the truth and shaming the devil. Yes and Amen to all of that.
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This is an interesting contrast to the May 24, 1963 James Baldwin meeting where RFK was very indifferent to the plight of Black Americans and at the 24th and Erskine shouted “These are my people.” Black people should never be comfortable with white liberals.
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“Blacks are gaining in economic power, academic achievements and are merging into the mainstream. The importance of education, ability to communicate and willingness to “put your best foot forward” are the ingredients of success. Job opportunity and willingness to move to the jobs helps. – Allen Shaw
@Allen, it’s time to wake up now. Check out these two links provided below.
http://atlantablackstar.com/2018/05/14/womans-body-found-hanging-tree-near-georgia-walmart-police-dont-suspect-foul-play/
https://www.wbls.com/news/news-0/two-black-men-lynched-murdered-hands-white-oklahoma-family
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@ Mary
Between May 1963 and May 1968 his brother was gunned down. According to biographer Arthur Schlesinger that made him put himself in the shoes of those who also suffered, to see stuff like racism and the Vietnam War from the other end. It was something he seemed incapable of doing when he met James Baldwin, even when Black people were telling him point-blank what they were going through.
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@Abagond: Thanks for sharing that information, I guess it took something like the violent death of his sibling to understand and have empathy. Because during that Baldwin meeting he was apathetic.
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