Frederick Douglass said it

[GreenJagWar]

In 1857, Frederick Douglass gave a speech where he talks about the necessity of fight for Black Americans, arguing (emphasis is mine):

"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others."

This was 164 years ago; Douglass spoke before the civil war about the need to fight to secure freedom. It's not necessarily violent but it will hurt. What I see in the Black community is a mess of charities and assistance for people that white supremacy has discarded into poverty, the haughty Black elites ignoring, denying, or harming the non-elite Black; the overpolicing, the Black gangs fighting each other instead of white people, Black women and Black men displaying interpersonal violence but Black women use white supremacy to disable the Black man. Our fight has been distracted and irrelevant since the 70's.

What, if anything, can change this? Or perhaps you see things differently. Let's discuss.

[GreenJagWar]

"The honorable Fred Douglass was speaking to different people in a different time."

What does this mean? Therefore his life is irrelevant now? His words? His actions? What was the point of this sentence?

[400years]

Have yall ever noticed that every time the black community is in question they always make it a habit of portraying us as needing outside help as if we aren't able to act and think for ourselves? So I always wondered if liberal charities use our communities as a means of satisfying their savior complex? And because the people living in those communities either don't seem to know any better or are just opportunists in disguise they accept these handouts and help keep alive the fact that we can't feed ourselves or we are constantly in a state of needing help.

[GreenJagWar]

Did this question originate from Frederick Douglass's quote and the questions associated with it? Are you claiming that Frederick Douglass is doing that in this quotation? Or perhaps from the rest of the speech?

I wonder how you judge the Black community's ability to cause significant change without help? Did we need help to escape slavery? Did we need help to end segregation? What counts as help? If we had the ability to change our situation ourselves it wouldn't matter what people who give us handouts think because it would help either way or are you claiming that we do need to care about what white people think of us.

[400years]

The question isn't related much to Frederick Douglas' quote but it got me thinking about a reoccurring subject and I just felt the need to point it out. When you talk about the abolition of slavery the point that there were white abolitionists always comes up as a counter argument. But because of the situation our people were in and because there were white people historically associated with the abolitionist movement, it makes me wonder if the reason we haven't seen any sort of significant change is because we continue to accept handouts and concessions from the liberal enemy, and they don't want us to be independent because it means they would no longer have political power over us.

i think they continue to "help us" because since we've got the right to vote african Americans usually vote for left leaning politicians. So as long as we take their help, we give them the power which they use to keep alot of us helpless and divided from our own.

Remember that it wasn't "us" who ended segregation we had to rely on the white man to change the laws to end it. It wasn't "us" who were freed but it was a white man who signed a law and "freed" us. While I do recognize the efforts made by us to seek what some would call justice, you just have to think about the fact that there was never a moment in history where we took our liberties back with force and our own elected african american politicians. Those who gave us our liberties were white liberals who to this day still expect us to feed into their decades old savior complex by saying "haven't we done enough for you people?"

[GreenJagWar]

Ok, got it.

When you say "liberties back" are you assuming that we had liberties before and lost them in America? That doesn't match history. We must fight to gain liberties, to gain our freedom. We started as non-human, not as citizens with rights and freedoms. That is part of the reason most ADOS are on the left or the 'progressive' team because any backwards movement is bad for ADOS.

What exactly do you mean by "handouts and concessions"? What about the theory that white people have prevented our ability to work together, to be "independent", to have political power. That systemic racism makes

We didn't start with any of that so you need to prove with some evidence that we actually have the ability to do what you claim.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation of the USA felt threatened by Black Panthers and through infiltration and illegality destroyed the group from inside and from outside.

So you say "we should do for ourselves" but you say nothing of the terrible history of our liberation movements (the betrayal and outside fights) especially the most recent.

Do you see the problem?

It wasn't us? We definitely played a large part in it, we definitely fought and died for it. We definitely escaped and rioted and killed...we did what we could. Let me remind you that white people fought on both sides in the Civil war, if you fight for them and force the people who disagree to follow it then its not the same thing as giving us liberties. England gave rights to their African descendants. We had a war where we forced people to treat ADOS like citizens. ADOS and the formerly enslaved had to convince the Union Army to allow them to fight. So to act as if people just didn't decide to fight is incorrect. We have fought from the very beginning, unfortunately we are against people that hate us and against the value of our work used by those same people who stole it from us. Why do you make it seem like we have power that we aren't using instead of the idea that we are prevented, through the law and society, from doing anything about our issues?