Negative Impact of the Civil Rights Movement: Part 1

The Civil Rights movement was the greatest and the worse thing that happened to Blacks in America.  It was the greatest thing for Blacks because it resulted in Blacks being granted human rights.  Blacks got the right to vote, attend taxpayer supported educational institutions, eat at restaurants, work in major industry jobs at the management level, and just basically enter through the front door.

The Civil Rights movement also had residual positive effects.  It raised the conscious level of a nation, sensitizing its people to the wrongs that had been done to Black people.  Because of this movement, people of all colors were able to interact for the first time in ways they never had before.  Blacks had hope and dignity and Whites had friends and neighbors.  Other races enjoyed rights in this country that they would not have gotten had it not been for the struggle of Blacks.

No other movement could have liberated Blacks from the discrimination that they experienced in America prior to the 1970's.

Unfortunately, the movement lasted too long.  It lasted so long that Black people became fixated with it.  Blacks failed to take the next step.  That step is two fold.  Part one is working to improve the individual.  As individuals, Blacks need to become more educated both philosophically and practically.  They need to work on their individual morality and spirituality.  They need to raise their individual standards and work ethics.  Part two is working together as Blacks for the betterment of Blacks.  Once Blacks got their basic freedoms, it was time to stop concentrating on Whites and concentrate on themselves.

For whatever reason (ignorance, glory, greed), Black leaders (so called anyway) have continued to perpetuate not only a dead movement, but a movement whose basic premise is now wrong.

The premise of the movement now is one of integration.  Actually it is not even integration, but assimilation.  A large number of Blacks still want to be assimilated, i.e. give up everything that is associated with being Black, and be absorbed by Whites.  They would rather do this than become independent and self-determinative.

The results of promoting this dead and erroneous movement have been absolutely catastrophic to Blacks.  For one thing, Blacks have not built anything of substance since before King died.  They have not built any more colleges and universities.  Take a look at Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Watts in Los Angeles and Harlem in New York.  Those areas had doctors, lawyers, shop owners and other thriving businesses prior to the Civil Rights movement.  Once the movement and the misguided premise of assimilation took hold, Blacks turned their backs on their own businesses and institutions and tried to fit in with Whites.  As a result, they lost or gave up the legacy that their grandfathers and grandmothers built for them.  Most of the best Black areas of the 60's are now slums in the 2000's and filled with poverty and violence.  Continue to Part 2.