2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: The Rise Of Bernie Sanders And The PANIC Of The Third Way Democratic Centrists [View all]Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)Using the term doesn't make one.
Please define brogressive. Thank you.
As you might suppose, I know a number a white liberals and what the BLM movement have to say about them, while an overgeneraliztion, isn't at all off the mark. I know quite a few who are well-meaning but utterly clueless. I'm at least enough aware of that to second guess myself whenever I open my mouth. Listening is a very good defense against ignorance.
I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X when I was in high school (1967-70), living in a lilly-white suburb of Los Angeles. That was a real eye-opener. I was amazed at the difference between the Malcolm portrayed in white popular culture and the Malcolm in his autobiography. I would mark my reading of that book as a major milestone in my path to being a progressive rather than a wishy-washy liberal. I got a few clues reading it. Anybody who hasn't read it really should. Another book I read about the same that also woke me up was Black Power by Charles V. Hamilton and Stokely Carmichael. Once again, there was what the white media said about the black power movement and there was what a book co-authored by Stokely Carmichael himself had to say about it. I stopped thinking that it was some kind of black racist reaction to the injustice of white racism and began thinking of it as something of which I had nothing to fear and something that even merited my personal support.
Reading those books was a valuable lesson in learning how other Americans live and think and also in how not to trust everything I hear and read in the media.
Those were good lessons to learn.