Civil Rights War

The Civil Rights Movement of America's 1960s was inevitable in a country that didn't have very much respect for people with African-American origins or for women of any origin. Bolstered by President Lyndon Johnson, who wanted to take Americans’ minds off the horrors and the merchandising of the war in Vietnam, the movement was initially a demonstration of southern black opposition to the slavery mentality still prevalent in much of the Bible Belt.

Led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and encouraged by LBJ, the Civil Rights Movement was suddenly in every American's face and the movement would be in full swing by the time the "n" word was generally considered to be a dirty, racist, bigoted word. Black Americans wanted to be referred to as "African Americans" and the term sounded good to most Americans and even progressive. But white Americans were still called "white", whenever they weren't being called "honky" or "whitey" or "cracker". Apparently non-white Americans thought it was perfectly OK for black people to continue calling white people names like that, especially on the new TV sitcoms starring African Americans like Sherman Hemsley and Redd Foxx, whose hatred of white people as characters George Jefferson and Fred Sanford, knew no bounds.

Racial slurs against white people were, for some stupid, hideous reason, considered to be funny and not offensive, especially when famous black movie actors in the 1980s began referring to white men as "white bread" or "Jim Bob" or "Joe Bob" or "Jethro" or "hillbilly" or just plain "redneck". Well, it might have been fun for these "African-American" actors to enjoy their equal opportunity for hatred in the public arena but these dirty, racist names were just as bad as the word "nigger" and none of these names were one damn bit funny to me. Nasty is nasty and racist is racist, no matter how you slice it. Fighting racism is pointless if you use racism as your weapon and anybody from my part of Appalachia could have told you that.

"European-American" would have been a nice word for any American who had family origins in Europe but that would have also included people of African, Asian, Hispanic and Pacific Island origin as well. "Native-American" would have been a better handle for anyone born in the United States but that would have made us all just a little too equal and that apparently wasn't the purpose of this new movement. Besides, what would Americans call the descendants of the people originally native to the North American continent? The word "Indian" was definitely out. And Whoopi Goldberg seems to be the only non-Caucasian U.S. citizen who likes being called just plain "American" these days.

Alas, The Civil Rights War all boiled down to incidents of name-calling and finger-pointing and demands for reparation that would obviously never benefit those who had been wronged in the first place or punish any of the original wrongdoers. Apparently, the Equal Rights Amendment wasn't the crown of victory for minorities and women it was intended to be. But then any real social panacea is spelled out in actions, not words.

So, what began as a necessary component of cultural evolution, the Civil Rights Movement in America soon ended up as a new civil war of race hatred, fueled by television, Hollywood and the Internet, instead of a welcomed cultural movement spearheaded by a handful of dedicated visionaries with a plan.