"Is this the Birth of a Nation?"

Melissa Harris-Lacewell argues in the above-referenced article that parallels drawn by Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow between the health care battle and the civil rights movement miss the mark:

"But there is a very important difference between Bloody Sunday of 1965 and Health Care Reform Sunday of 2010. In 1965 [Rep. John] Lewis was a disenfranchised protester fighting to be recognized as a full citizen. When he was beaten by the police, he was being attacked by the state. In 2010 Lewis is a long time, elected representative. When he is attacked by protesters, he is himself an agent of the state. This difference is critically important; not because it changes the fact that racism is present in both moments, but because it radically alters the way we should understand the meaning of power, protest and race." "When protesters spit on and scream at duly elected representatives of the United States government it is more than an act of racism. It is an act of sedition."

The relevant comparison and analogy is mid-19th century Reconstruction, Harris-Lacewell continues, when "in 1877 the federal government abdicated its responsibilities to new black citizens and withdrew from the South. When it did so it allowed local governments and racial terrorist organizations like the KKK to have the monopoly on violence, force and coercion inthe South for nearly 100 years."

Check out the entire article.