Riots in Baltimore

While your heart is the right place and you did a nice job with your condensed history, there are some things that in response that can be expanded upon and corrected. I'll do that first and then I'll offer my thoughts.

  • The one part of your response that rubbed me the wrong the way was your bit on African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Blacks did not create this language (or dialect) to "differ from how white people in America talk." AAVE is very old and as long as there have been blacks in America, there has been AAVE. AAVE is an English based dialect/language that barrows various aspects of other languages and dialects that were spoken on the Atlantic slave trade. Elements of British English, Southern American English, Ulster Scots, the English Cockney dialect, French, and the languages of West Africa have all influenced AAVE. In fact two features of AAVE that are made fun of the most, the use of double negatives and "ax" instead of "ask," come from English. Just look at this sentence from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Shipmannes's Tales, "I thoghte nat to axe of him no-thing. I prey thee, wyf, ne do namore; Tel me alwey, er that I fro thee go, If any dettour hath in myn absence Y-payëd thee; lest, thurgh thy necligence, I mighte him axe a thing that he hath payed." The use of double negatives can be seen in Cockney English and British English in general, (ex. "I can't get no/ Satisfaction" and "We don't need no education / We don't need no thought control.") If anything AAVE is a language that shows how often and how long blacks have came into contact with whites.

  • While Malcolm X and MLK were two big names of the 1960's Civil Rights Movement, you should also name check those who came before them. Paul Cuffee, Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, Henry McNeal Turner, Edward Wilmot Blyden, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey have all left an impact on the 1960's movement. Also, African-American culture has given America a lot of great things. I cannot imagine a world without jazz, blues, or rock. Likewise, writers such Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, or Maya Angelou. It is not African-Americans that are keeping their culture separate from white American culture, it's white culture that is doing that.

For my final thoughts I think it would be helpful to put up some quotes:

  • "What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?" Jean-Paul Sartre, Black Orpheus

  • "How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what's already yours? You haven't even made progress, if what's being given to you, you should have had already. That's not progress." Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet

  • "If I am not for myself who is for me? And being for my own self, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?" Hillel the Elder

  • "A man can be destroyed but not defeated" Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

So is the violence in Baltimore justified? Perhaps or perhaps not. But one must understand what is going on. As you wrote, African-Americans are getting the short end of the stick since they got here. But, when you write "We need to reach out to each other, especially the rioters. We need to listen to them, we need to help them," they will wonder where have you been all this time. It is not a hate for white people that drives these protesters, it is the fact that they are humans and yet are treated like they are not. Wether we like it or not, to them the stores they destroy are not done out of idiocy. To paraphrase Baldwin, many African-Americans do not feel like these are there stores, there homes, there schools, there neighborhoods. And in many ways they are right. But while a good letting out of anger is all right, that community must not give into nihilism. It is sad for sure. No one wants to see a store looted or go up in flames. But a man is dead. He is never coming back. African-Americans are saying something and we must listen, even if the truth hurts us.

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