1/ w/ the MLK holiday coming, I think we all know we will be treated to the utter misrepresentation of his views and vision, by people who have no real interest in carrying on his work. First, we'll have the right wingers who insist he would oppose affirmative action...
2/ bc of that whole "content of character" line...ignoring the context of the line, and the fact that King blatantly endorsed what we now call aff action at least 5 times, including in his book Why We Cant Wait, written the same year as the March where he delivered that line...
3/ Then we'll get the nice safe liberals who focus on his anti-segregation work and ethic of love, but ignore that he was condemning capitalism by the end of his life, and admitting we needed some kind of democratic socialism...
4/ Then we'll get folks who focus on his non-violence but ignore that he applied that to the U.S. as a nation as well and said we were the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." And that he called poverty violence...
5/ And then we'll get the class-centric leftists who totally appreciate my reference to the democratic socialist thing in point 3, and who love to point out MLKs class consciousness but ignore that he also supported some form of reparations for black folks specifically...
6/ Oh and then we'll have his niece on FOX using his name to spread her anti-abortion views, even though he didn't share them, and a phony quote attributed to him about criticism of Zionism being inherently anti-Semitism (he did not say this)...
7/ Because everyone wants to break off tiny pieces of King without actually delving into the depths of the Kingian tradition....We've created a secular Saint out of a man who was hated and hunted till the day he was killed, because it's easy isn't it, once he's gone?...
8/ But white America hated this man so long as he was still breathing. At no point did most of us support him. Worth remembering. Thats folks parents and grandparents, still very much alive...
