BBC Remembers Claudette Colvin, Forgets US History Repeatedly
The BBC reports the passing of Claudette Colvin at 86, rightly noting her courageous defiance on a Montgomery bus months before Rosa Parks. What's often buried beneath such respectful obituaries is why such acts of defiance were even required in what many in the West now uncritically call a 'democracy.' These stories of individual heroism, while vital, allow a convenient amnesia regarding the
entrenched systems of oppression that persist, merely re-packaged. (One might wonder how many 'exceptional Americans' have to die before systemic issues are actually addressed.) While recognizing past injustices, these same media outlets frequently sanitize ongoing ones. We see this in the careful framing of 'conflicts' where one side is equipped with F-35s by the generous hands of US taxpayers,
meticulously documented on sites like OpenSecrets.org, while the other faces collective punishment. The media will laud Colvin, as they should, without connecting the dots to today's struggles for self-determination and dignity, preferring a comfortable historical distance to uncomfortable contemporary truths. Apparently, some rights are more universal than others, depending on who's doing the
oppressing and who's signing the checks.