The Civil Rights movement and the Anti-War movement were more related than I initially realized. Who was sent over to fight for the United States was problematic. This is because the draft was inherently racist, in addition to discriminating against poorer Americans. At one point in the video a narrator said that, “If you’re white, middle-class, and a dean’s list kind of guy, then relax”. The narrator was essentially saying that a college educated white man would not be drafted, which brings up the unequal aspects of the draft itself. There was strong opposition to the Vietnam war, but the United States established laws that were aimed to prevent drafted men from refusing to go overseas to fight. If a person would refuse to go and fight in the war, then they could be convicted of draft resistant. Muhammad Ali, who was a strong opponent of the draft and the war, refused to fight and as a result lost his heavyweight belt. The draft resistant laws forced many people, who were ‘randomly selected’, to go fight in a war that they did not believe in or support.
The video about the Anti-War movement is especially interesting to me because I live about thirty minutes away from where the Kent State shooting occurred. I have learned about the incident over and over again as a student in Ohio, but its impact in the Anti-war movement is still surprising to me to this day. The video mentioned how the Kent State shooting acted as a catalyst of sorts for people, who otherwise would have stayed silent, to speak up against the war This is impactful for me because I always think of Kent State as just a random college in my backyard, but for an incident to occur there and change the course of American history is mindblowing for an Ohioan like me.
The whole situation about the draft really caught my attention too. It was crazy how if you were a white college student then you didn’t have to worry about being drafted.
The draft and the process in its entirety was highly problematic and inherently discriminative. The fact that wealth was able to determine the importance of one’s life speaks directly to the American culture and what it values. Further, I really like how the narrator included the connection between CRM and the anti-war protests but it’s also important to realize there was also a lot of pushback and division within the CRM from people that did not support the movement’s involvement in the antiwar protest.
The fact that education and wealth decided peoples ability to be drafted is absolutely crazy and also really caught my eye.