Steve Gilliard has a valid point; America has been a police state, and not that long ago.
Steve Gilliard's News Blog : An American police state in action:
The reason I'm pretty harsh on the people talking about leaving America for more politically suitable climes is simple: America hasn't been all that good for black people.
I remember reading Jack Greenberg's autobiography. Now, Jack Greenberg was the head of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund after Thurgood Marshall and his long time deputy.
One of his cases which sticks in my mind is one he had in North Carolina. The state wanted to give him eight years for walking across the street from a white woman and looking at her. That's it. Looking at a white woman. Didn't even whistle at her. When Emmitt Till did , he was beaten, castrated, murdered and tossed from a bridge with a refrigerator tied to his back. At the age of 14.
Unless George Bush brings back segregation, I think fleeing is a severe overreaction. Because many of you really don't understand how hellish America can be. Until 1967, blacks couldn't go into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They would be refused entry by the guards. Thomas Hoving stopped that as one of his first acts as director. That wasn't Alabama, that was New York, three years after my birth.
People forget or are unaware of what a real American police state was like. You can call it Mississippi. When ONE black man, a crazy man named James Meredith, tried to go to Ole Miss, there were days of riots. People died. When little girls wanted to go to a "white" school, they had to bring in the 101st ABN.
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However, I doubt many liberals are actually going to move to Canada: it is nothing more than a rhetorical device, expressing disgust with the election results. It's gotten some press because it fits the 'soundbite' media template, but if you look at actual immigration statistics a year from now, I bet there isn't going to much of a spike.
More from Steve:
People forget what American used to be like. They forget that repression actually didn't just exist in America, it was the law of the land.Could things get bad? Sure. But you don't whine about it, you fight to change it. These people weren't playing, they weren't talking about adjusting the law, they didn't follow any law and they damn near killed Hamer for asking for the right to vote. They followed her, sent informents on her, used the law to get her.
People forget that if there had been a national vote on segregation, the law would not have changed. The FBI and state police fed every dirty tidbit of info they had on these people, leaked it to the media, tried to pick more suitable leaders. People remember the civil rights strugle from a few key moments, but it was an 11 year fight from Brown to the Civil Right Act of 1965. And even within the black community, challenging the white power structure was not a popular act. It was nasty political battle from day one, and a lot of people sat on their hands or sided with the people in power, and they had good excuses. But they were only excuses.
So when people talk about Bush, I remember America has been a lot worse if you weren't white.
