When I watch footage of the 1960s Civil Rights Marchs I cant help but wonder about those who would?

Question

Spit on the protestors & sometimes even worse. What do they think of their behaviour when they look back?
Are they still the seething bigots they were then?
Are they disgusted with thier own behavior back then?
Do they excuse & rationalize their behavior?

Does anyone know someone who was like this back then? How do they talk about it now?

I'm not refering to the kind of bigot that would sit in their livingroom thinking "why don't these ****** stick with thier own kind?"

I'm refering to the kind that would go out to protests & marches to scream, hurl insults & spit on people! People who would maybe even set fires!

And I understand that you can't judge people from other generations by our standards.

(I bet Lincoln was opposed to biracial relationships, but he still was a frontier in the fight for equality)

I was asking what they feel about thier previous behavior now.

He folks!

I am not asking WHY they behaived as they did.

I am asking HOW they feel NOW in retrospect about thier behiavior back then!

Answer 1

Well Kat, to address your main point, I'd say that very few people feel the same about other races today compared to 40 or 50 years ago. And I'd say that the vast majority of those who were the seething, bigoted activists (rioting, screaming, agitating, etc.) are very ashamed of how they once thought and behaved.

Sen. Robert Byrd, Democrat of WV was a leader in the KKK as was his father. But he has since renounced all that the KKK stands for. There are many other Robert Byrds still alive today and still dealing with the implications of their earlier behavior. Most I believe, have truly changed their earlier thinking.

So these were values which we learned from older generations. Even growing up in the north, my father would use the "N" word in casual conversation. At first I thought it was OK to say things like that. But by the time I was 21 years old I had played sports, gone to school, served in the military and lived with other races. I changed... as did we all.

We get our first set of biases from our parents and our culture while we are growing up. But as we reach adulthood, we are challenged to rethink our point of view based on what we've learned and observed independently.

You grow up, you take responsibility for yourself and change the things that need to be changed. Sometimes you need to apologize as well.

Answer 2

Cultural change is always traumatic on those living through it. People try to build lives that have the appearance (illusion) of being safe and in part that includes the familiarity of cultural connections and traditions. When other people, events, trends, or anything else seem to threaten that perception of safety, people react in ways often not very pretty.

As cultural changes evolve, people change with it developing new relationships which, in their minds, represent new concepts of safety.

To stereotype these individuals as evil, mean, ignorant, or just stupid is likely not very realistic. More they are attempting (however ill conceived) to maintain their familiar world. Consider the urban riots of the late 60s and the 70s. All they did was to hurt the individuals who lived there, the ones who perpetrated the riot. There was no logic to them. Even though the people who lived there might desire better environments, their world was being changed by many different pressures that in part contributed to the riots.

My point is that reasons that people acted (or reacted) in certain undesirable (in retrospect) ways, is not simple but rather a complex mixture of many factors. By the way, I’m old enough to have been an adult during those 60s. .

Answer 3

People will do all sorts of things that they otherwise would not dream of doing if the society in which they live values those things.

In the 50's and 60's it was beating up blacks and "out side agitators"

In the 30's and 40's it was killing Jews, Gypsies and Slavs in Germany.

Don't leave out the 70's either. The left wing has its moments. Think about the poor soldiers returning home from Viet Nam and being spat upon.

Once you dehumanize a person it is easy to justify the cruelest of behaviors.

Lots of people have left their bigotry behind. The question to ask is why they left it. Did they see the light of reason, or did society just stop appreciating it. If it is the latter, that behavior could return in a heartbeat.

Answer 4

Thankfully, most of those people are dead by now, but sadly I think most of them died in their own ignorance. What about today? You have religious groups around the world even now who truly believe that they and only they are the "chosen" of God. What makes them so special? Anyone I've ever heard making these claims has not given one convincing reason for this belief and yet it is out there. So, I am sorry to say that prejudice is alive and well, and if we don't try to see that not one of us is any more entitled that any other, our outlook as a species is not good. What a shame! We stand on the verge of so many great discoveries...........other life, and end to poverty, the origins of the universe.............what a shame to die out at this or any time!

Answer 5

Let me introduce you to one of the great historicist vitues - judging history by the present. You simply can't do it.

Let me explain - in the 1960's a lot of people were still what we would call racists. They didn't think of themselves as racists, though. They saw their institutions being "overrun" by people of colour and other minorities. Now, that their institutions were in fact being "overrun" is up to considerable debate, but you must force yourself to see it through their eyes. Minorities were not thought of as people. That doesn't mean that the white men and women who spat at protestors or minorities were racists, though. During the 20th century the field of eugenics was developed as a scientific explanation for the races. Hitler used eugenics during the 1940's to justify his persecution of European Jews. It was a scientific field that had many believers. Even as late as the 1960's there were many people who honestly believed that black people were not "people" in the same way that white people were "people".

You're asking me how that doesn't make them racists again, I know. But simply put, these people saw what they honestly believed to be a threat to their way of life by a group of subhuman people. Just remember, it was well known that blacks weren't as smart as white people, weren't as capable as white people, and were immoral - unlike white people.

Today, most people who stood up against integration in the 1960's probably don't mention their stance on the issue. Today we know that black people are just as intelligent, capable, and moral (and immoral!) as white people are.

Good luck!

Answer 6

My grandparent were those bigots back then.
But they realised their behavior was out of step with the majority of Americans and American values and they just kept their mouths shut. Eventually (after years) they realised their opinons were incorrect and changed them. Only the truly hateful and ignorant held onto those out of date and incorrect positions.

Answer 7

They did it out of fear for losing their way of life.

The years have taught them one of two things:

1) if they feel they did lose their way of life, then they are still angry and bitter.

2) if they feel that their fears never came true, they feel ashamed of what they did, or perhaps just neutral, and justify it to themselves that everybody else was doing it too.