Kap would be far more effective if he had his followers firebomb the opposition.

effective at setting blacks back 50 years, sure.

the civil rights movement proved civil disobedience is more effective than violent attacks in the long run. If X could learn that you should be able to some 60 years later, too.

The civil rights movement was only successful because of the threat of violence contrasted with a peaceful alternative.

It was only successful because it was able to garner enough support from liberal whites. Had the civil rights movement turned violent, this support would have been thinned out substantially, and their momentum would have been gone.

what is it with you and simplistic historical hypotheticals? you act like 'support by whites' and 'threat of extensive racial unrests' are somehow mutually exclusive, when in fact the latter could (and probably has) directly cause the first.

i mean sure, to liberals already sympathetic to the cause, physical violence would arguably be a downside, but suggesting that it would turn them away from it entirely, is a pretty big stretch given which rights were at stake. and much more important: suggesting that idealists recognising the justice of the cause were the only way to success, outright ignoring people who chose 'equality on paper' as the 'lesser of two evils' over a racewar, is just mindblowingly ignorant.

BDS was the most effective tactic, and passive resistance.




Schools are more segregated now than they were then. Why do you think it was successful?

This post was edited by Skinned on Dec 12 2019 02:55pm

'Then' referring to the early 60s? Didnt desegregation only start in the late 50s? I highly doubt that school segregation in 1964 or so was lower than today. Got any source for this claim?



It achieved its major policy goals?!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

These are considered landmark legislation by pretty much every scholar and historian - why do you think that is? Probably not because these acts were just a worthless piece of paper that didnt change anything in practice...



So... your argument is that the threat of black violence, and a potential race war, was scaring weak-minded ciitizens into begrudgingly accepting civil rights legislation? Possible, but I doubt this explanation. Violence, or the threat thereof, would have given the opponents of the civil rights movement so much ammunition to discredit them and push back; and bled at least some support from white supporters of the movement. I just dont see how more supporters could be won than lost by such an approach.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 12 2019 04:14pm

read again, my argument is:



what i'm saying that your hypothetical exclusively looks at one side in order to push your supported narrative that violence would have ended the momentum of the movement, when in fact it is much more complex issue, and even people not convinced of the goals of the civil rights movement would have chosen it over the possibility of an all out race war.

I'm not an idiot, and I do see the complexity, the 'tradeoff' if you will. It's just that I fundamentally disagree with this part:



I fundamentally disagree with the notion that the number of these people (who would have chosen the civil rights movement as the lesser of two evils compared to a race war) would have been bigger than the number of undecideds or reluctant supporters who would have been driven away by the use of violence (or credible threats of it).

Based on this assessment, I arrive at the conclusion that violence would have been a net negative for the civil rights movement. And considering how much resistance there still was, they didnt have a lot of room to spare, so that even the loss of just some momentum would have put the passage of the civil rights act in question.


We're obviously both arguing in hypotheticals here...