Posted on 09/12/2012 11:28:13 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Folk rock legend Bob Dylan has some strong words about America that many of his compatriots may not want to hear: He says the stigma of slavery ruined America and he doubts whether the country can get rid of the shame because it was “founded on the backs of slaves.”
Dylan spoke to Rolling Stone for a cover story that coincides with the release of his 35th studio album, “Tempest.” Dylan has long been an outspoken critic of American culture and its inherent inequalities, particularly during the 1960s when his songs “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” voiced his generation’s support for civil rights and anger at the Vietnam War.
In his interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan, who has won just about every music and songwriting award on the planet, seems intent not so much on attacking America for its racist history but observing that racism has long been holding the country back.
“People (are) at each other’s throats just because they are of a different color,” he said. “It will hold any nation back.”
A 71-year-old man born in Minnesota at a time when blacks in many parts of the country couldn’t eat in white restaurants or use white water fountains, Dylan has seen a great deal of America’s progress and evolution during the past century—all the way to the election of the first black president. But clearly he has not seen enough progress. And he thinks it all goes back to the country’s founding.
He tells Rolling Stone that blacks know that some whites “didn’t want to give up slavery.” Only after a civil war cleaved the nation in two did slavery come to a reluctant end—after more than 600,000 Americans (including 260,000 Southerners) died in a war that started because the South wanted to preserve the institution.
“If slavery had been given up in a more peaceful way, America would be far ahead today,” Dylan observes.
When the magazine asked if the election of President Obama was helping to bring about a change, Dylan says: “I don’t have any opinion on that. You have to change your heart if you want to change.”
The magazine’s new issue hits newsstands Friday.
You been here since 2000 and do not recognize accepted board courtesy tradition of pinging any FReeper you mention by name in a post?
Really?
And then lash out at someone pointing it out?
Really?
Truth is that nobody has any idea how things in the past would have unfolded IF.....xyz had or hadn’t happened the way it did. There is no way to know, so it is a waste of time. What holds a country back is the inability to move on after recognizing grave errors and taking measures to correct them. This is what is wrong in the Middle East. While they are still angry about what tribes did ages ago, we made up with Japan fairly quickly. The strength of America is our ability to not hang on to grievances. (This is sort of the difference between men and women regarding “wrongs”...women remember forever, men fight and forget). You can stay in resentment and old wrongs, or you can start from where you are and go from there. What is not possible is to change the past or to really know what “would have” happened.
These Dylan threads are always the same. People lose interest or they work it out, that he’s widely admired by conservatives who KNOW HIS WORK.
And also what's lost on him...is some 300k American's ( Mostly white folks...) that were fighting for the North died...and ultimately freed the slaves.
If the dumb ass wants to actually think about it....Democrats have ruined America. And I can prove it.
Talented sondwriter, can’t sing worth a damn, political moron. So who cares what his opinions are?
The pity is that probably 90% of blacks don't know who Thomas Sowell is.
The question is, if we could turn back the clock, knowing what we know now, would we have chosen to have slavery or not.
I know I would say, “No, Thank You” to slavery. Just imagine where this country would be today if we never had it.
Now of course, saying this, might get one labelled as a racist...but which is it, would they rather have had their ancestors as slaves here, or would they have rather stayed in Africa?
And remember, lots a racism back in Africa among all of the different tribes. And they all kept their own slaves as well....history isn’t so “black and white” to excuse the expression.
What an idiot.
Hey Zimmerman, what country didn’t have slavery in 1776? What country wasn’t built on the backs of slaves?
Try reading history before you spew BS completely out of context. You’re just blowing in the wind.
I agree. In addition to the basic violation of human rights, slavery artificially inflated productivity.
Leftists from very cold, very white northern states have the oddest opinions regarding race, it’s as if it’s all an abstraction to them and they blurt out the most amazingly naive things that would be regarded as quite racist coming from anyone else.
Slavery was. It just was. There is a destructive legacy, yes. However, try to envision an alternate history without it. What would be missing as a result of there being no descendants of African slaves? Music in this country would be bereft. Food. Dance. Sports.
You takes the good with the bad. And, as bad as chattel slavery could be, there were worse fates, such as being left in Africa. There would be no such posterity for these individuals had they not been brought here by force.
God works in strange ways.
Mr. Dylan, I understand that North Korean is pretty nice this time of year. You might be happier there.
Bob Dylan was born "Robert Allen Zimmerman" (Hebrew name שבתאי זיסאל בן אברהם [Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham])[14][15] in St. Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota,[16][17] and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range west of Lake Superior. His paternal grandparents, Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States following the anti-Semitic pogroms of 1905.[18] His maternal grandparents, Benjamin and Lybba Edelstein, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the United States in 1902.[18] In his autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan writes that his paternal grandmother's maiden name was Kirghiz and her family originated from Kağızman in Turkey.[19]
Dylan's parents, Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone, were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community. Robert Zimmerman lived in Duluth until age six, when his father was stricken with polio and the family returned to his mother's home town, Hibbing, where Zimmerman spent the rest of his childhood. Robert Zimmerman spent much of his youth listening to the radio—first to blues and country stations broadcasting from Shreveport, Louisiana and, later, to early rock and roll.[8] He formed several bands while he attended Hibbing High School. The Shadow Blasters was short-lived, but his next, The Golden Chords, lasted longer and played covers of Little Richard rock and roll[20] and other popular songs.[21] Their performance of Danny and the Juniors' "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone off.[22] In 1959, his high school yearbook carried, beneath his photo, the caption: "Robert Zimmerman: to join 'Little Richard'."[20][23] The same year, using the name Elston Gunnn [sic], he performed two dates with Bobby Vee, playing piano and providing handclaps.[24][25][26]
Zimmerman moved to Minneapolis in September 1959 and enrolled at the University of Minnesota, where his early focus on rock and roll gave way to an interest in American folk music.
Gain a restaurant, lose a country.
Without slavery America would still exist instead of starting a long death with the 1965 immigration Act being the final nail in the coffin.
There is no “without slavery” regarding the colonization of this continent or the establishment of this nation. Europeans didn’t even introduce the practice, it was already here. We really take too much for granted, human bondage in some form or another is really much more the norm, historically speaking, than is being free citizens of a constitutional republic. We have the luxury of being free of the practice, and labor under the false impression that it was eradicated for all time in 1865.
It wasn’t. There are slaves to this day.
Bob Dylan was and is a very atypical lib. Certainly he wasn't anything like what the radicals of the 1960s wanted him to be, and even expressed a sneaking admiration for Barry Goldwater. He doesn't have much enthusiasm for Obama, either, to judge by the other quote taken from the interview:
When asked if President Barack Obama was helping to shift a change, Dylan says: "I don't have any opinion on that. You have to change your heart if you want to change."
It's not like saying slavery was bad is controversial. And it's not like Dylan was explicitly giving contemporary forms of slavery approval or a pass. A reporter was angling for a quote to make his interview sell and be memorable. Dylan couldn't help obliging him. He's got a lot stirring in his brain and you can never tell what will come out on any particular occasion.
Then the quote is taken out of context and used to stir up fake controversies, before people have had a chance to actually read the whole interview. I get the feeling there's a lot less here than meets the eye, though that's true of most of these celebrity stories.
Everyone here knows the information that you just posted, but it was irrelevant to my post.
We can’t even pick our own fruit now.
You began your reply with an impossible scenario.
And, no, “everybody” does not know the information I posted. Quite a few people believe the United States has sole responsibility for slavery in the world. These are the same people who believe the United States has existed for over 400 years. The ignorance is astounding, particularly so when dealing with a topic so heavily freighted with leftist propaganda.
Are you serious? Do you think this thread is being discussed without everyone here knowing that we cannot travel back in time and change history?
As far as what you posted, everyone one this thread knows that information, you are not posting somewhere else, you are posting here, on this thread, to freepers.
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