Thread by @deonteleologist

I just discovered perhaps the worst conservative attempt at co-opting MLK ever. So of course, here's a thread on @jasonrileywsj's dumpster fire of a video for @PragerU. 🧵

Galaxy brain take #1: King won the civil rights movement because nobody replaced him after he was murdered.

And note the dubious claim that Black Americans must not face institutional racism because, if they did, someone would've taken King's place.

"Racial gaps in income, education, and home ownership were narrowing in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s," but then widened, Riley says. Really?

Here are some figures on Black-White gaps in income, education, and home ownership. None of them look anything like the animated graph in the video.

Now we get into the classic line rehearsed by Sowell, that current racial equality is caused not by any sort of systemic oppression but "cultural deficiencies" and "anti-social behavior" in Black communities.

Relying on a cherry-picked quote, Riley lumps MLK into this camp.

But what did MLK say in (in my opinion) his greatest written work, the 1967 book "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?"

That we find the origins of racial inequality in "the white man's problem... white America must assume the guilt for the black man's inferior status."

Rather than even attempt to rebut the arguments of those of us who maintain that systemic anti-Black racism remains one of the most significant forms of injustice in American life, what we get is condescending dismissals of strawmen about white privilege and microaggressions.

Furthermore, the whole idea that MLK had some deep commitment to colorblindness is astoundingly ignorant of what he actually wrote. In these screenshots he expresses support for race consciousness and reparations; see QT for similarities between MLK & CRT

Here MLK anticipates the "danger" of Riley's right-wing response to conceptualizing the plight of the Black American family as socially caused rather than due to race essentialist/biological inferiority: it'll be used to justify neglect & "rationalize continued oppression"

"A half century after King's death, plenty of people are paying him lip service. Far too few are following his example."

You can say that again, @jasonrileywsj. [fin]