Thread by @timjacobwise

Your daily reminder that those who would ban antiracist education or Critical Race Theory would have to ban MLK. And the only reason people don't realize this is they've never read King or listened to any of his speeches except one misinterpreted line from one speech

THREAD...

After all, King recognized the systemic nature of injustice and how to address it when he said:

"...the problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.” (2)

He also was clear about white ignorance:

'Whites are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.' (3)

...and the way whites were to blame for society's problems. Here is what he said on that subject:

"The policymakers of white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty (cont...) (4)

..."It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society."

Got that? The crimes of white society. Not colorblindness here...

But there's more: (5)

From the same statement after the Watts uprising:

"slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society...if the violations of law by the white man...were compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man...." (6)

And he criticized America relentlessly when he said:

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettoes without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government." (7)

And he even said America may go to hell unless it fundamentally changed when he said:

"America too is going to hell if she doesn't use her wealth...to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life..." (8)

In his last sermon, written but never delivered, he made clear the systemic failure of the nation:

"America...gave the black man a bad check that’s been bouncing all around. We are going to demand our check..." (9)...

It is imperative that we confront the critics of CRT nd antiracist education who are seeking to censor and ban books and stifle real learning, and demand to know why they support banning MLK, because they do, whether they will admit it or not... END