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   Raccoon🏳️‍🌈 (raccoon@techhub.social)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 04:31:08 JST Raccoon🏳️‍🌈

   in reply to

   • Ms. Que Banh

   @PhoenixSerenity
   This is something that impresses me greatly about #MuhammadAli, that he was drafted, and, even though he could have used his celebrity status to stay safe, he used it to become a major face in the opposition of the #Vietnam war. The world got to see hearings with old white men calling a successful young black man "boy" repeatedly, chastising him as some sort of criminal for this simple act of not wanting to kill people for a country that didn't respect his rights.

   It also affects the #transgender movement to this day that, despite him repeatedly asserting that his name was now Muhammad Ali, they kept referring to him by his #DeadName. Backlash to this set the tone for later rights of other people to go by different names.

   • Embed this notice
     Ms. Que Banh (phoenixserenity@beige.party)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Nov-2024 04:31:09 JST Ms. Que Banh

     Countless #BlackAmericans had openly opposed the #VietnamWar. As early as 1965, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee produced a statement that unequivocally lambasted the war, and said that no Black American should “fight in Vietnam for the white man's freedom, until all the Negro people are free in Mississippi."

     Still, thanks to the draft's implicit #RacialBias , Black Americans disproportionately served in Vietnam. This is largely because then-college students — the majority of whom were white men — could defer enlistment. As such, the burden of enlistment fell more on non-college educated men, particularly non college-educated #BlackMen. As a result, by 1967, 64 percent of all eligible Black American males had been drafted. Only 31 percent of eligible white men had.

     Photo from Life Magazine archives.

     #BlackAmericanHistory #SystematicRacism #WhitePrivilege #USA #KKKAmerica #MilitaryDraft #RacistUSA #AsianMastodon #StopAllWars #WarIsHell

     anban repeated this.