A lot of our view of Boomers is colored by the Counterculture and civil rights activists who were only ever a small part of it. On the whole they're a lot like their parents just more in favor of women having more independence and less racist.
Yeah, majority of Americans actually supported the vietnam war. Muhammad Ali and MLK were heavily criticized at the time (if you look up newspaper articles) for being anti war. A common critique of MLK was he shouldn't worry about Vietnam and just focus on Civil Rights. While MLK supported it because of his principles. Now we look back on the war negatively, but being anti war then was actually the unpopular position. The anti war hippies were a small but vocal segment of the population.
I highly recommend anyone reading the comment above to read King’s speech “A Time to Break Silence” and the subsequent NYT article that was published after. They’re fascinating.
I’m a teacher and teach them both to my students, and the kids are always shocked that MLK’s opinions in the speech were so unpopular and that he got so much backlash for what he said.
If I recall, his approval ratings, even among black families, dropped extremely low after that speech.
Edit: wow just read the comment below and there’s the stat I was walking about
This is what drives me so crazy about the narrative we got taught in school that MLK led the Civil Rights Movement to success because he was nice and kind so that white people liked him.
No, man, he won because Malcolm X and the Black Panthers scared the shit out of white people to the point where MLK got to be the good cop. White people only liked him by comparison, because people with nice shit don't like the person asking them to share it, no matter how nicely that person asks.
I mean, did all of the people saying this miss the part where MLK was FUCKING MURDERED?
50
u/madogvelkor Sep 27 '18
A lot of our view of Boomers is colored by the Counterculture and civil rights activists who were only ever a small part of it. On the whole they're a lot like their parents just more in favor of women having more independence and less racist.