Thursdays Lecture

I felt that Thursdays lecture by Paula Giddings and Beverly Guy-Sheftall was very interesting, although not what I had expected. It was fascinating to hear about Ms. Giddings talk Ida B Wells book. The moment in the lecture that stands out to me however, was when Giddings was talking about when Well’s anti-lynching campaign started, there was little support for it in America, and it was not until she lectured in Europe that she started gaining vocal supporters. I did a little reading to learn more about this issue in particular, and found an article that explained that in the end, America’s concession to anti-lynching was not based on any desire to promote human rights, but to appeal to Brittan and greater Europe as a trading partner. At the time, America was desperately trying to build economic relationships, and in bringing her Anti-lynching campaign to Brittan, Ida B Wells managed to gain enough outrage that it forced the united states to take note and change its lynching policy.
This is once again a glorious example of society not changing unless being absolutely forced to, and for the wrong reasons. Time and time again, money is shown to be the universal motivator. While learning this particular example did not surprise me, its still extremely frustrating to me that major human rights issues are not seen as important until money is involved. And this is not a problem that we have overcome in the past century; to this day issues of humanity are not dealt with unless something profitable is at stake. There are dozens of examples, you need only think take into consideration every war we’ve ever fought for gains, and ever genocide we’ve ever ignored.