AAS2010 Introduction to

African American Studies

Comment Paper #3

3/14/2011

Dr. King speaks of the struggle as a hope for the poor and oppressed, regardless of race or creed as Ho Chi Minh fought for the liberty of his people over the corrupt Dieu regime. Noting he had several major reasons for commenting on Vietnam, the most apparent and obvious of the irony that we “have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools” (King). King referred to a cruel manipulation of the poor, those youth with education or money were exempt from a war, sending poor youth and minorities into a country and fighting a war they did not understand, fighting for liberty of the people in Vietnam while killing side by side, yet they would not be able to eat in the same room or live on the same block in America.

From the Japanese, French and later American involvement, the Vietnamese have been embroiled in 116 constant years of warfare and oppression, betrayed by the Japanese, betrayed by the French and anticipating and inevitable betrayal from the blatant lies of the U.S.A. King mentions this distrust of the Vietnamese against the United States and how “Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made” (King). King spoke on the viewpoint of the “opposition” by seeing their point of view, by seeing their questions and their assessments that “ we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers