This is a very amusing thread ...

coming from the son of a Black Panther.*

"The goal of post-war white Chicago was to keep African Americans sealed in the ghetto. Working-class and ethnic whites worked toward this goal through what Hirsch calls "communal violence," which is to say entire communities angling toward terrrorism."

Entire, eh?   Terrorism, huh?
You sure about that?

He continues on, concluding:

"The ghetto is not a mistake. The racism of white ethnics in Chicago was not due to brainwashing, false consciousness or otherwise being too stupid to recognize their interests. On the contrary, it was the political strategy of one community, attempting to subvert the ambitions of another. The strategy was successful."

- 30 -

 

People forget -- maybe they were too far away to even see it then :
the very legitimate fear of violence to their own families (the "white flight" areas of Chicago's Side South are now amongst the nation's most murderous -- did the white ethnics do that?) ;

the drop in school quality/property values;

 the increase in petty crime (ie/theft of property);

and absolute lack of choice most ethnic whites had in staying/maintaining their own  community values once it became clear their neighborhoods were being sacrificed to expand the black belt.

Would you want to live on there today?
Did the separatist blacks of the times want white immigrants to remain there, or did they want them to ... move along as the territorial blocks changed hands?

Has he spoken to his father about those times, or anyone with even minimal recollections of those times?

Where did Coates get his history/sociology degree, since such issues are obviously not so simple at first glance without further study to be making such broad generalizations? 

-----------------------

*Ironically, Coates' son attends a private country day school.
Presumably very safe...

Perhaps one day he will see the common ground between the non-violent of all races.


Added:
I'd say the goal of  much of post-war white Chicago was to put a roof over one's head, provide for one's family (singular, not multiples), and to stay employed 5 or 6 days a week, banking the paycheck and advancing the next generation through education.

Dare I say many non-Panther working-class blacks shared/share the same desire? or does that not fit into the liberals' modern-day template?


And:
Who really/also lost from the fast displacement and need to start over  and successfully rebuild elsewhere? 

Not everyone benefits by playing the "history's victims" card...
thankfully. 

 I suspect it's more a learned behavior than genetic.

Wiki:
In 1966, the Panthers defined Oakland’s ghetto as a territory, the police as interlopers, and the Panther mission as the defense of community. The Panthers' famous “policing the police” drew attention to the spatial remove that White Americans enjoyed from the state violence that had come to characterize life in black urban communities.”

In his book Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America journalist Hugh Pearson takes a more jaundiced view, linking Panther criminality and violence to worsening conditions in America's black ghettos as their influence spread nationwide.

Similarly, journalist Kate Coleman writes regarding a 2003 Panther conference at Boston's Wheelock College, "If the Wheelock conference wanted to examine the real legacy of the Panthers, its participants should have pored over the cold statistics showing a spike in drive-by shooting deaths and gang warfare that took place in Oakland in the decade following the Panthers' demise. The Black Panther Party had so fetishized the gun as part of its mystique that young men in the ghetto felt incomplete without one.  ... The Panther fetish of the gun, worshiped by impressionable young black males, maimed hundreds of black citizens in Oakland more surely than any bully cops."
...
In October 1967, Huey Newton was arrested for the murder of Oakland Police Officer John Frey, a murder he later admitted and pointed to with pride.  At the time, Newton claimed that he had been falsely accused, leading to the "Free Huey" campaign. On February 17, 1968, at the "Free Huey" birthday rally in the Oakland Auditorium, several Black Panther Party leaders spoke.

H. Rap Brown, Black Panther Party Minister of Justice, declared:

Huey Newton is our only living revolutionary in this country today...He has paid his dues. He has paid his dues. How many white folks did you kill today?

The mostly black crowd erupted in applause. James Forman, Black Panther Party Minister of Foreign Affairs, followed with:

We must serve notice on our oppressors that we as a people are not going to be frightened by the attempted assassination of our leaders. For my assassination—and I'm the low man on the totem pole—I want 30 police stations blown up, one southern governor, two mayors, and 500 cops, dead. If they assassinate Brother Carmichael, Brother Brown...Brother Seale, this price is tripled. And if Huey is not set free and dies, the sky is the limit!

Referring to the 1967–68 period, black historian Curtis Austin states: "During this period of development, black nationalism became part of the party's philosophy." 

During the months following the "Free Huey" birthday rallies, one in Oakland and another in Los Angeles, the Party's violent, anti-white rhetoric attracted a huge following and Black Panther Party membership exploded.**

^{------------------------------}
**Our Chicago block at 77th and Wolcott changed hands in October of 1972;  I was freshly 4.

No liberal guilt here. We too have paid our dues, as newcomers, for America's origin sin. 

If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I'd worked for all my life,
and I had to start again,
with just my children and my wife...

I'd thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today,
‘cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can't take that away...

And I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I'll gladly stand up...
next to you and defend her still today...
‘cause there ain't no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.