A nice story, gives us all hope...

[max_tranmere]

I was looking around on YouTube for a clip of that American preacher who was planning to burn copies of the Koran, following my posting of a topic about it on here. In the next column on YouTube there appeared numerous clips about the deep-south and some of the people involved in this and that over the years. One was an interview with a former Ku Klux Klan leader who had his entire organisation defeated by one humble black man who refused to be militant in response and was just friendly and passive.

Have a watch of this interview with this former KKK boss. He now works for racial integration and receives death threats all the time for his anti KKK stance. The actions of the black preacher shows what can be done through using your brain rather than being militant.

Clip:

[David Johnson]

Nice story.

"The actions of the black preacher shows what can be done through using your brain rather than being militant."

To be fair, (an oft used phrase on this forum, usually coinciding with the emergence of a total lack of fairness I've noticed) the approach was not entirely successful for the Jews in Nazi Germany as I recall.

And if you listen to the words of the great Billie Holliday's song "Strange Fruit" it wasn't always entirely successful in the Deep South either.

Cheers
D

[Arginald Valleywater]

The KKK and other white supremacist nutters are still doing good trade in the USA I'm afraid.

[Sam Slater]

It's nice when it works, but I'm with Edmond Burke on this: "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

[one eyed jack]

Those kind of raicsts always pick on the good god fearing folk.

You never see them rolling on a gang of hardened coloured gentlemen packing gats listening to loud rap music in their low riders after serving a stretch in prison

[one eyed jack]

Just watched it Max.

Yes. Nice story but why should it be the black reverend that had to put up with all that nonsense and be passive?

I doubt that same technique would have worked in the same way for many others who have fallen prey to lynching by their peers.

Certainly didnt work for the likes of Stephen Lawrence. Remember him? Or Martin Luther King or many others so this one story doesnt give me hope at all. Its an exceptional story and the truth really is that most people only understand violence, pain and loss and until they have experienced enough of this do they realise that the whole thing was a huge waste of time by the cost of their own hatred.

I certainly wouldnt be having a sense of humour and laughing at them guys if they burned down my church. I dont see that as intelligence. I see it as stupidity.

Its only intelligence if it works and even then he took a gamble. Them boys are just racists looking for a good tear up or that reverend would have been strung up if they were real hardcore racists

[max_tranmere]

It certainly took a lot of guts and a lot of resiliance for the Reverend to remain so nice and so friendly towards those KKK guys considering what they were doing to him. The passive approach worked that time but in a lot of instances it would not have done: the people doing it would have just carried on and eventually they would have wasted the Reverend as they would have been so annoyed over the fact their militancy wasn't working.