Talk:Civil rights movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Northern Ireland, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Northern Ireland on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale. (If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.)
Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.
WikiProject Northern Ireland tasks: Here are some open WikiProject Northern Ireland tasks: Places: Mussenden Temple and Downhill Demesne, Devenish Island Monastic Site, Killyclogher, Derryvore Landmarks: The Skerries (Northern Ireland), Black Pig's Dyke, Helen's Tower Parks and gardens: Events: Ulster Cup, Ulster hockey People: Alison Campbell, Paul Charles (novelist), Paula Clamp, Max Clendinning, Colin Cooper (academic), Newton Emerson, Lucy Evangelista, Robert Hall (doctor), Shauna Gunn, Sophie Hoopman, H Douglas Keith, Charles Michael Lavery QC, Henry Lavery, Francis Maginn, Jim Malley, Catherine Jean Milligan, Phillip McCallen, Robert MacDonnell, Joseph Tomelty, Gayle Williamson, Zane Radcliffe, Professor Richard Rose, Brian Baird (newsreader) Newspapers/Magazines: Fortnight Magazine 'Schools/Colleges: Glenola Collegiate School, Our Lady and St Patrick's College, Belfast Boy's Model School, St. Columbanus' College, Streets: Rivers: River Bush, River Mourne, River Moyola, River Roe Organisations: Industrial Development Board, Forest Service Northern Ireland, Rivers Agency Northern Ireland, Invest NI, Roads Service Northern Ireland, Child Support Agency (NI), Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland, District Policing Partnerships, Compensation Agency, Office of the Oversight Commissioner, Electoral Office for Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Housing Executive, Central Services Agency, Northern Ireland Blood Transfusion Service, Census Office in Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, Cameron Commission, Hunt Committee, Stanley Leisure, Ormo, Sunblest (currently re-directs) History: Rose Report, History of Armagh, History of Newry, History of Lisburn Buildings: Belvoir Park Hospital, Guildhall, Derry Major topics: Geography of Northern Ireland, Geology of Northern Ireland, Integrated Education Edit or discuss this list.

	This article is supported by the Sociology WikiProject, which gives a central approach to sociology and related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article Civil rights movement, or visit the project page for more details on the projects.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

	This article is part of WikiProject Human rights, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Human rights on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the Project page, where you can join the Project and contribute to the discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the assessment scale.
High	This article has been rated as high-importance on the assessment scale.

Contents 1 Deleting sections on wars of independence in Portuguese colonies 2 Added some info, Opinions on Scope of the Article? 3 Article lacks focus, needs to be split up 4 Smorgasboard item 5 Casing of Title 6 Smorgasbord item 2 7 Northern Ireland oompa loompas? 8 Opening paragraph of NI Section 9 WikiProject class rating 10 Should we have this article semi-protected?

[edit] Deleting sections on wars of independence in Portuguese colonies

I vote for deleting the sections on the wars of independence in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. Independence/decolonization struggles are not primarily struggles for civil rights. The sections should be moved to the article on the Decolonization of Africa.195.73.22.130 20:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Added some info, Opinions on Scope of the Article?

PERHAPS THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DISABILITY SHOULD BE INCLUDED ALSO. WHILE THE MAIN PORTION OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN AMERICA WAS FOR RACIAL RELATIONS, THIS ARTICLE SHOULD ALSO ADDRESS THE RELATIONS BETWEEN PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES AND THOSE WHO ARE TEMPORARILY ABLE-BODIED. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.133.103.182 (talk) 21:38, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I've added some info and a lot of new headings to allow for the inclusion of many more post-modern civil rights movements. This is more of a suggestion, to get ideas going on how to include these events into the articles, perhaps only through mentioning them briefly

It seems to me that what is also important right now is a better introduction, mentioning the relevance to these movements of the idea of civil rights since the American Revolution, the United Nations declaration of human rights in 1948, and the significance of decolonization, particularly Ghandi's struggle against British colonialism.

Once there is a general outline connecting these different developments, the article can be split up or perhaps parts can be merged into other existing articles.195.73.22.130 21:23, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Others have already made soms suggestions for improving the article. How about making this an article about civil rights movements since the Second World War? In that case there would be less of a focus on independence movements, anti-colonial movements and student movements. These movements would be discussed, but the focus would be on how these movements and groups influenced struggles for civil rights and democracy within existing independent states. A workable suggestion?Fairlane75 21:33, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article lacks focus, needs to be split up

I am no historian, but I agree with others that this article deals with too many unrelated subjects:

the US civil rights movement, the emergence of Black Power and other minority-based activist groups, the Northern Irish civil right movement and the unset of the troubles in Northern Ireland, decolonization and wars of national liberation in Africa, the 1960s student movements in Germany and France, Chinese cultural revolution, etc. etc. What the ... is this page about?

There is only one solution: this page needs to be split up! I suggest this page should be about modern civil rights movements in the broadest sense. This could start with a brief summary of the ideological links between emerging civil rights movements and anti-colonial movements in the US, British India, Africa etc etc,. The article should then also attempt to explain in which ways various civil rights movements and independence movements differed in their goals (equality before the law, cultural autonomy, regional autonomy, national independence) However, the focus should be on civil rights movements rather than on anti-colonialism and decolonization. On those subjects, plenty of articles already exist.

The focus would be on the concept/ ideology of civil rights (views of what civil rights are, how do they relate to the concept of human rights), on the goals of different civil rights movements and on how civil rights movements began to organize themselves: ways of mass mobilization and tactics.

Student movements were influenced by the civil rights movements and these connections could be mentioned. However, I don't see how the culural revolution in China was a civil rights movement. That is nonsense!

I also don't see why the article should end in 1980. Plenty of movements still struggle for democracy against dictatorial regimes. Many of them share the ideology and many of the tactics of earlier civil rights movements. They surely deserve a mention.195.73.22.130 19:16, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused about what this page is about. Why only focus on 1960 - 1980? Many of the social movements of that time (including some described in the article) were not civil-rights focussed but were revolutionary. Additionally, civil rights movements have occurred before and since that time. Could the title be changed to "civil rights movements" and the content reorganised? OR the name changed to "Social movements of the 1960s"? Or am I missing something? ntennis 06:13, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

The Civil Rights Movement spans much longer than that, I believe it's from 1950 to the present day. Then again, this is my opinion. The reason that 1960-1980 is so heavily focused on would be that the most drastic and notable movements happened then. Makoto 02:51, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Unless this article is about an NGO called "Civil Rights Movement", it should not be capitalized, per WP:NAME. I rarely see it capitalized in news media. The POV call for people to protect the "legacy" is also a very dubious choice. Ultimately, I think the tenuous connections between disparate regional political trends verges on original research. Why not (for example) Human rights activism 1950-2000? --Dhartung | Talk 05:30, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I think they should include the early 1990's riots too, because those are examples of how civil rights are still being fought for even after the 60's, 70's, and 80's. -Jarrad from the United Kingdom

I disagree. I think that any claim people make that the Civil Rights Movement as a whole is "still going on" are living in a dream world. That does not mean that civil rights actions are not still taking place-- of course they are; the 2006 U.S. immigration reform protests and the 2005 civil unrest in France are just two of many, many examples worldwide of continued struggle. But there is a difference between the loose incidents of today, which even amongst themselves often have wildly varying levels of support among populations, and the comparatively cohesive movement of a generation ago, which was not only largely inspired by a tangible force (the left) which is lacking today, but also occurred worldwide amidst growing repression in all corners of the world that reached its fever pitch in all such areas at roughly the same time. We can't claim that today, so we can't claim a Civil Rights Movement, either, even though we can, as I said, claim that civil rights struggles are still going on... 71.246.93.238 09:40, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Smorgasboard item

This article is too broadly-based to make any sense. Every conflict is not due to a civil-rights movement. Superslum 16:17, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

DISAGREE.. totally. man. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.244.126.49 (talk • contribs) 16:34, 23 May 2006 (edit)

Interesting dialogue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Allen Park Community School (talk • contribs) 16:15, 21 June 2006 [This improperly deleted contrib has been restored, 12:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)]

Completely agree Superslum. German student movement section needs massive cutting. Chinese cultural revolution is absolutely not a civil rights movement. I don't think May '68 was either, tho probably Prague Spring could be called one. Movements for independence in Africa are extremely important, but not appropriate for this article - there should be a new article with all that material in. Not surea bout Tlatelolco Massacre. Unless someone argues against this, I think I will

• create new movements for independence in Africa article and move that stuff there,
• remove Cultural Revolution
• cut German student movement

--BobFromBrockley 16:02, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, no answer in a week. I'm going to start making some of these changes. If I go too fast, revert!
--BobFromBrockley 16:59, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

_ _ Good work BobFromBrockley! But let's agree on what the purpose of this article is. Several concerns have been raised above. The current definition that introduces the article is: Historically, the Civil Rights Movement was a concentrated period of time around the world of approximately one generation (1960-1980) wherein there was much worldwide civil unrest and popular rebellion.

_ _I've never heard this definition of the civil rights movement! A period of time? Where does this definition come from? In my experience, if someone says The Civil Rights Movement, they are referring to the struggle for civil rights for African Americans in the USA, peaking from the mid 50s to the late 60s. If, on the other hand, someone is discussing civil rights movements, the time period is irrelevant; it refers to any social movement whose political discourse is dominated by the language of civil rights. Hence, Black Power is contrasted with the civil rights movement. Can we move the article to civil rights movements as a start for guiding the content here? Alternately, as I suggested above, we could rename the article to Social movements of the 1960s or something similar — then most of the content can remain.
ntennis 05:40, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Casing of Title

User:Dhartung accurately cited WP:NAME back in May: there was no formal group (even in the US, let alone an international one) whose name was Civil Rights Movement, so the topic is either (the) civil rights movement or civil rights movement(s), no matter whether its scope is US, worldwide, or in between.
--Jerzy•t 03:17, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

However, an editor who presumably should have known better hid the history of civil rights movement under a rdr here about 6 months ago. Someone needs review the histories of both pages and determine, first whether it was simply a cut and paste move, and if not, whether making copies of both histories, and then shuffling the two histories into one, will be proper. I can do either, once someone here leaves me a message on my talk saying it's talked thru, but i'd prefer not to do anything without a rough consensus by editors active on one or the other that the two sets of revisions represent one topic or two. Don't forget to check both talk pages.
--Jerzy•t 03:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I support the final resolution by that editor, who agrees that the (diffident and dead-end) editing on the former Civil rights movement article should not continue retained under a Rdr.

1. The move has been effected.
2. The former Civil Rights Movement article and talk are now moved to Civil rights movement and talk:Civil rights movement respectively.
3. The former Civil rights movement article revisions and talk revisions seem to have made no difference in the course of the former Civil Rights Movement article and talk; they are now deleted revisions of Civil rights movement and of talk:Civil rights movement respectively. (They are accessible to any admin.)

--Jerzy•t 12:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

_ _ I emphasize that "civil rights movement" (probably a familiar enough phrase not to demand being written as "civil-rights movement"), is not a proper name but is a generic phrase that can designate any social movement seeking the kind of legal and/or social rights generally referred to as "civil rights" (see your favorite dictionary).
_ _ The fundamental point here is that while "Civil Rights Movement" is used with that casing, and contrasted with the more generic concept "civil rights movement", it does not designate a single clearly enough defined thing/concept that an encyclopedic article can be written about it under that title; i doubt any NPoV article restricted to the scope of "Civil Rights Movement" could be written, that wouldn't be better merged into Civil rights movement or some other article closely related to it. (In fact, the purpose of upper-casing it is probably usually either

1. to paper over differences, for temporary mutual benefit, between organizations between which those differences are too great for them to consider merging or subsuming one into the other, or
2. to label other participants in a civil rights movement as outside the Civil Rights Movement and in either, e.g., the Cozying-Up with Whitey Movement or the Burning Down our Community Movement.)
   

_ _ I'd argue that verifiable use of the term with upper-casing is worth discussing, briefly, in Civil rights movement, and perhaps in some cases more at length in articles like American civil rights movement and Irish civil rights movement. (But probably not in Anti-apartheid movement or South African civil rights movement (which if needed at all should probably be a rdr to Anti-apartheid movement), since "Anti-Apartheid Movement" would probably, again, play the vague role in South African discourse that "Civil Rights Movement" has in American.
_ _ With that in mind, WP:NPoV is also fundamental to WP and to every article. The perceived disorder being regretted on this talk page may well reflect too many editors who want the article to defend their PoV on what civil rights movements should be (and what therefore the real Civil Rights Movement is), and too few committed to impartially describing all of those relevant PoVs, and the events (both "good" and "bad" but without sorting out which are which) that have occurred in the context of civil rights movements.
--Jerzy•t 12:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Smorgasbord item 2

I still think that the issues identified in two sections up in this discussion need resolving. The issue of the timeframe, identified by ntennis, remains. An article called Civil rights movement should have no section on the Chinese Cultural Revolution. However, an article on Social movements of the 1960s probably should. Does anyone think there is a case for creating such a page and moving some of the material from this article there? If not, we need to trim a lot of stuff here. BobFromBrockley 13:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

BobFromBrockley - Agree with your point on the cultural revolution. However, even with the alternative title I would argue that it would be misplaced as it was it was instigated by the regime. 129.178.88.75 13:38, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I think 'Civil rights movements' (plural) would be more appropriate as the page covers many different movements, even if they were all linked. My suggestions for improvement would be:

• Expand the intro to define what a civil rights movement actually is.
• Reduce the info on each movement to about 200 words and a link to the main article. Each of the American civil rights movements (black, Native American, women etc) would get 200 words each as they are basically seperate (but linked) movements.
• Include other civil rights movements not included here. The Northern Irish civil rights movement springs to mind, and I'm sure there are others.
• Remove non-civil rights movements such as the Chinese cultural revolution. Arguably the African independence movements should also be removed to their own page, as independence and civil rights are not the same thing.
• Include brief sections on international movements, such as gay rights and feminism. Decolonisation could be one of these. The international movements should be grouped together at the start of the article, followed by civil rights by country. --Helenalex 21:56, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Northern Ireland oompa loompas?

could somebody please edit the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland because apparently "Northern Ireland saw the formation of the oompa loompas, in which people joined the yankees bandwagon, the Campaign for Social Justice lala in Belfast in 1964". There is someone out there who keeps getting away with these stupid editing changes and I actually want to know what it is.

Hopefully the rewrite will point in the right direction for more detailed info. --Red King 20:44, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

There is a revert function to deal with obvious vandalism... --Helenalex 19:25, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem was that nobody seemed to be looking for any obvious vandalism - eg [1] was left in for over a week, and [2] and [3] were there for three days. I only came across the article by chance, and have had it watchlisted since. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 19:33, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Some people were just blindly removing rude words without looking at the incoherent mess left behind. Does any reasonable person believe "... the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Associaton (of the Republic of Ireland against the United Kingdom..."? Further, Nobel Prizes for John Hume and David Trimble are very noble, but what do they have to do with the topic. The only practical solution was to rewrite using the intro para of the main article. --Red King 23:31, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opening paragraph of NI Section

I've removed the recently inserted paragraph relating to Bloody Sunday, which has its own article. Standing on its own, before the current 2 paragraphs, was POV. If it is going to be reinstated, a lot more information will also have to be added to put it into context. --81.132.246.132 16:47, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I reordered the paragraphs and fixed the reference links included.--padraig 21:57, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

It reads better than it did, with the paragraphs in the wrong order, however the section really doesn't say much at all about the civil rights movement in NI. Not only that, but the Bloody Sunday paragraph still sticks out like a sore thumb. Can someone who actually knows the subject, both within its reference to the Irish Republican Movement, and outside that, provide us with something better. As it stands, it doesn't read well, and gives no real background, or explanation as to what was happening in NI at the time. --81.132.246.132 22:21, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

The main articles are listed at the top and give alot more information, this is just a brief outline.--padraig 22:26, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

No it doesn't. It still reads POV. This article needs the input from someone who holds less passionate and subjective views about this subject. The NICRA very quickly became a republican movement which is not stated here at all. If this section is to survive, it needs to become a precis of the main NICRA article, not a selection of what you want it to say. --81.132.246.132 00:47, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know where you get the idea of the NICRA becoming a republican movement in fact the bulk of the main players became the SDLP when it was formed, with the exeception of the peoples Democracy section, who were very critical of the IRA and Republicans.--padraig 00:59, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 16:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Should we have this article semi-protected?

There seems to have been quite a bit of vandalism on the page in the last few edits. Maybe it should be semi-protected? --24.123.233.158 (talk) 15:12, 29 January 2008 (UTC)