# so, this is what some think points to Black greatness? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 12, 2012, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575 "2012-03-12T18:49:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/101 "2012-03-13T18:25:32Z")
Oh I don’t know, maybe the umpty-million trollish threads you start that at root are all variations on “explain these stupid/lazy/violent/entitled/whatthefuckeverelse black people to me please”? All while you bat your eyelashes and act like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/102 "2012-03-13T18:42:08Z")
> [@Normal\_Phase](#): > > Oh I don’t know, maybe the umpty-million trollish threads you start that at root are all variations on “explain these stupid/lazy/violent/entitled/whatthefuckeverelse black people to me please”? All while you bat your eyelashes and act like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. So, you have zero evidence of the claim either. Just a general _feeling_. Thanks for sharing. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/103 "2012-03-13T18:58:02Z")
**maggie** doesn’t hate black people. Just ask his gay friends! ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/104 "2012-03-13T20:49:17Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > What gives you that idea? Please be specific. You first 😃 ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/105 "2012-03-13T21:05:45Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > You actually find that explanation more sensible than, “she was innocent?” This thread popped into my head while walking back from lunch. So, just to be clear (because some posters evidently have jumped to a false conclusion :eek:), I am not of the mind that the “packed” jury Horowitz speaks of was the result of any conspiratorial shenanigans. I take his comment to mean packed in a more passive manner, that the jury was “packed” with people who identified as liberal. And given the trial was in Marin County, and not Oxford, Mississippi, that seems like a reasonable assumption, even if a bit hyperbolic. That said, it is also very likely, as one poster mentioned, that the jury thought she was guilty but that the evidence didn’t allow them to reach the level of confidence they need to convict her. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/106 "2012-03-13T21:06:46Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > You first 😃 Oh, you got nuthin’. Okay, carry on. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/107 "2012-03-13T21:42:21Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > My point about her buying a gun when she already had guns, was to counter the argument that she _needed_ to buy another gun(s) in order to protect herself. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have bought them, just that since she already had multiple guns, she didn’t need to buy more to protect herself. So, the explanation that “I needed them because their were threats on my life” is hollow. Just to balance out **magellan01** ’s penchant for baseless speculation with some more actual facts on the case, I quote a [_New York Times_ article from May 1972 covering Davis’s trial](http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/08/home/davis-witness.html): > [@](#): > > It was, according to state witness, Jonathan Jackson who smuggled the guns registered to Miss Davis into the courtroom where he forced the release of three black convicts who joined him in taking five hostages who were supposedly to be used later to obtain the freedom of the Soledad Brothers. > > The state had maintained that Miss Davis, a former philosophy instructor at the University of California, Los, Angeles, and a member of the Communist party, had made the weapons available to young Jackson. > > But according to testimony today from Valerie Mitchell, a young black woman who also uses the name Tamu, several weapons registered in Miss Davis’s name were kept in the offices that served as headquarters for the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee and the Che Lumumba Club, a communist party cell that was black-oriented and counted Miss Davis among its members. > > Tamu said that in August, 1970, the two organizations had maintained their headquarters in her home, an apartment in Los Angeles that she had shared with the defendant. > > She said in her testimony that the guns had been kept in a rack in a closet and that on Saturday, Aug. 1, Jonathan Jackson was in the apartment alone and had received her permission “to use the equipment.” > > Tamu said that the weapons in the rack had included two carbines and a hand gun similar to those young Jackson had smuggled into the courtroom. > > She said that after giving young Jackson permission to use the equipment she did not check it again until a week later, on Saturday, Aug. 8, when the defendant came to the apartment. > > She said that she had opened the closet, checked the gun rack and found the weapons missing. She said that Miss Davis said, “Oh, no!” > > Tamu said that the defendant then had showed her a copy of a newspaper she had with her. It showed a picture of Jonathan using one of the carbines to hold witnesses at he Civic Center. That, she said, was the last time she saw the defendant until after Miss Davis’s arrest some two months later. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/108 "2012-03-13T21:47:56Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I really don’t get the response to this thread. Angela Davis might not actually be guilty of being an accomplice to a kidnapping and so on, but she’s still a pretty odd choice to be honored in a federal courtroom. > > I found that somewhat odd too. Yes, but you see, there’s a difference between, > [@](#): > > Originally Not Posted by [**bizarro magellan01**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro) > Why, exactly, is Angela Davis on a poster in a DC Courthouse entitled, “Black Women Paving the Way to Greatness in Politics.” in celebration of Black History Month. and, > [@magellan01](#): > > …Yes, the Angela Davis as recounted [here.](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/11/jury-isnt-out-on-angela-davis/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS) The one who played a role in the the kidnapping and killing of a judge from his courtroom. > > I understand how she may be liked by some portion of the fetid-brained among the left, but isn’t this a slap in the face to the others on the list? Not to mention a horrible message to send to all young black women? Is there any way that this sends a good message? The former may be a legitimate question or simply be rising to the low level of JAQing off, the later is why this thread got moved to the pit. It’s mostly a matter of tone and known poster history going a very long way to understanding how certain posters are responded to. > [@magellan01](#): > > … Let me state unequivocally that Davis or any other person otherwise barred from being able to buy guns had/has the right to buy as many guns as she or he chooses. My point about her buying a gun when she already had guns, was to counter the argument that she _needed_ to buy another gun(s) in order to protect herself. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have bought them, just that since she already had multiple guns, she didn’t need to buy more to protect herself. So, the explanation that “I needed them because their were threats on my life” is hollow. You might want to try posting this on a message board filled with gun owners who live in fear of UN black helicopters and FEMA death camps and try explaining to them why one person needs only multiple guns and not an arsenal sufficient to equip at minimum an entire platoon. If you should chose to try this please post a link . . . watching you get your ass handed to you somewhere else would be entertaining! CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![mister\_nyx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@mister\_nyx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mister_nyx)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/109 "2012-03-13T22:03:08Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Heavens, you really are a dumb one. I’ve made zero argument against her being able to buy a gun—or guns. She could buy 50 of them for all I care. What the hell are you talking about? And yet you’re saying she’s “scum” because she bought some guns and they were stolen from her. After that display of your intellectual prowess, I don’t think I’m worried about your evaluation of mine. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/110 "2012-03-13T22:05:51Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Oh, you got nuthin’. Okay, carry on. So what do you hate black people so much? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/111 "2012-03-13T22:23:30Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Is there any way that this sends a good message? [Angela Davis:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_davis) > [@](#): > > Angela Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis emerged as a nationally prominent activist in the 1960s, when she was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Black Panther Party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of “Critical Resistance”, an organization working to abolish what she views as the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is the former director of the university’s Feminist Studies department.[2] Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music and social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons.[3] Answer: **Hell,** yeah! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/112 "2012-03-13T22:33:16Z")
Let’s also be clear that the accuser, David Horowitz claims that he was unaware of the criminal nature of the leaders of the Black Panther Party and actively helped them until it supposedly dawned on him that they had murdered another helper. We can credit Horowitz at his word that he was a stooge, but we don’t have to do that if we don’t want to. I do give him such credit. But I also credit Angela Davis with the same being played for a fool. Stephen Bingham, grandson of Hiram Bingham, was charged in a similar case in the same era and local. He fled he was so certain he could not get a fair trial during these times. [Stephen Bingham - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Bingham) When he returned 13 years later he was tried and acquitted. ---
**Author:** ![florez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9e5f3/32.png) [@florez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/florez)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/113 "2012-03-13T22:33:17Z")
As I remember, many Chicano people in California, at that time, were proud of Louis Franco, the Mexican American juror at the Angela Davis trial, who spoke of feeling moved by the defenses final argument concerning the persecution of blacks in America, and that he could relate it to problems faced by Mexican Americans. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/114 "2012-03-13T22:39:42Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > Yes, but you see, there’s a difference between, and,The former may be a legitimate question or simply be rising to the low level of JAQing off, the later is why this thread got moved to the pit. Let’s see, here’s the second part which you quoted: > [@](#): > > …Yes, the Angela Davis as recounted here. The one who played a role in the the kidnapping and killing of a judge from his courtroom. > > I understand how she may be liked by some portion of the fetid-brained among the left, but isn’t this a slap in the face to the others on the list? Not to mention a horrible message to send to all young black women? Is there any way that this sends a good message? So what in that is Pit worthy? The off-handed allusion pointing out the existence of one portion of the left that is fetid-brained? No, something being GD worthy doesnt mean that they’re can’t be passion or insults toward a group. You just can’t insult other posters. Would you care to wager than I can find ten instances in GD where the right, or conservatives are backhanded? No, this is yet another case of a GD moderator abusing his powers. Here, **tomndebb** doesn’t like the point being raised, so he sends it to the Pit where he the swarm hurl invective and nitpick endlessly. He must keep his young flock fed. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2012, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/115 "2012-03-13T23:47:54Z")
Let’s also not forget that the radicalism and militancy of black leftists at the end of the 1960s was inspired in part by real and severe racial oppression, often perpetrated by whites within the criminal justice system. Such problems are exemplified by the events leading up to the 1967 Detroit riot: > [@](#): > > The Community Relations Division of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission undertook a study in 1965 of the police, published in 1968. It claimed the “police system” was at fault for racism. The police system was blamed for recruiting “bigots” and reinforcing bigotry through the department’s “value system”. A survey conducted by President Johnson’s Kerner Commission found that prior to the riot, 45% of police working in black neighborhoods were “extremely anti-Negro” and an additional 34% were “prejudiced”. > > In 1967, 93% of the force was still European American, although 30% of the city residents were African American. Incidents of police brutality caused African Americans to feel at risk. They resented the practice of many police in talking down to them: addressing men as “boys” and women as “honey” and “baby.” Police made street searches of groups of young men and single women complained of being called prostitutes for simply walking on the street. The police frequently arrested people who did not have proper identification. The local press reported several questionable shootings and beatings of blacks by officers in the years before 1967. After the riot, a Detroit Free Press survey showed that residents reported police brutality as the number one problem they faced in the period leading up to the riot.[34] The Black Panthers are now often regarded with horror and revulsion as tantamount to a domestic terrorist organization, but it’s little remembered that they were originally founded in 1966 as “the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense”, [to protect black communities against police brutality](http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Black+Panther+Party): > [@](#): > > Police violence against African Americans was a common complaint in impoverished Oakland, California. By 1966, two young men had had enough. One was Huey P. Newton, age 23, a first-year law student. With his friend Bobby Seale, age 30, Newton founded the BPP, with the intent of monitoring police officers when they made arrests. This bold tactic—already being employed in Minneapolis by the nascent American Indian Movement (AIM)—was entirely legal. Also legal under California state law was the practice of carrying a loaded weapon, as long as it was visible. […] Although they did not use the guns and maintained the legally required eight to ten feet from officers, the Panthers inspired fear. They also quickly won respect from neighbors who saw them as standing up to the predominantly white police force. The law books they carried—and from which they read criminal suspects their rights—appeared to many in the community to give the Panthers a kind of legitimacy. […] > > Antagonism toward the party by law enforcement officials had prompted California lawmakers to consider Gun Control. In May 1967, legislators met in Sacramento, the state capital, to discuss a bill that would criminalize the carrying of loaded weapons within city limits. To Seale and Newton, chairman and minister of defense of the BPP, respectively, the proposed law was unjust. Governor Ronald Reagan was on the lawn of the state legislature as 30 armed Black Panthers arrived and entered the building. […] [Seale] then read a prepared statement: > > > [@](#): > > > > The Black Panther Party calls upon American people in general and black people in particular to take full note of the racist California legislature which is now considering legislation aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless, at the very same time that racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror, brutality, murder and repression of black people. A lot of blacks in the late 1960s, particularly radical blacks, felt with some justice that their communities were under systematic attack from a racist system alarmed by the Civil Rights movement, and that some of the worst predators were the law enforcement officials who were supposed to protect them. It’s hard for us to imagine nowadays just how prevalent and serious overt racist oppression could be. If even some white conservatives nowadays feel that gun ownership is crucial insurance against potential oppression by “jackbooted thugs” in uniform, imagine how black radicals only a few short years after the Voting Rights Act must have felt. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/116 "2012-03-14T00:13:06Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > No, this is yet another case of a GD moderator abusing his powers. Here, **tomndebb** doesn’t like the point being raised, so he sends it to the Pit […] :dubious: In contrast to **tomndebb** ’s enthusiastic support of, say, [“race realism”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=644144), or [anti-Obama anti-tax diatribes](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=643879), or [anti-Obama moaning about “liberal hypocrisy”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=643356), or [nativist chest-thumping](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=639855), and so on and so forth? Seems to me that if **tomndebb** is really trying to keep Great Debates ideologically pure and uncontaminated by points of view he personally disagrees with, then he’s doing a pretty lousy job. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/117 "2012-03-14T06:43:17Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > A lot of blacks in the late 1960s, particularly radical blacks, felt with some justice that their communities were under systematic attack from a racist system alarmed by the Civil Rights movement, and that some of the worst predators were the law enforcement officials who were supposed to protect them. It’s hard for us to imagine nowadays just how prevalent and serious overt racist oppression could be. Great post, **Kimstu**. For a taste of just how much justice there was that feeling, and for those who want to understand just how “prevalent and serious overt racist oppression could be”, I submit that people should know more about [Fred Hampton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton), for example. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/118 "2012-03-14T07:29:45Z")
> [@](#): > > …She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department… I majored in that. Well, independent studies, mostly. ---
**Author:** ![mister\_nyx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@mister\_nyx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mister_nyx)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/119 "2012-03-14T07:34:55Z")
I for one am sick and tired of being threatened by these monsters running our philosophy departments. I’m just outraged by all the thuggish philosophers discussing their Kantian dialectics and holding judges hostage. How many people do you know who were murdered by philosophy professors? Truly, none of us will sleep easy until we deal with the thread of philosophers gone mad. ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575/120 "2012-03-14T12:26:42Z")
I’m outraged that the retard who represents Watts wasn’t mentioned. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-this-is-what-some-think-points-to-black-greatness/615575.md?page=7)