“ … There is always a lot of MLK whenever the subject turns to racial justice, equal opportunity and the dream of a colorblind society.
“Everyone lays claim to King’s legacy with such certitude that if as many people marched alongside him in the 1960s as have said they did, then there would have been virtually no one standing on the sidelines wielding batons and casting aspersions. The dream of which King spoke would be a reality. And the January holiday in his honor would be a celebration of the American experiment’s completion rather than a remembrance of a promise yet to be fulfilled. But we like our history pretty …
“ … Everyone sees themselves on the side of King. Everyone basks in the glow of his legacy.
“Few people see themselves as the moral equivalent of (Bull) Connor, the segregationist head of Alabama public safety who loosed the dogs and opened fire hoses on civil rights activists.
“They see themselves under the heading of populists protecting the jobs, homesteads and rights of working-class America.
“They are not (Jefferson) Davis, the leader of the Confederacy.
“They are proud Southerners protecting their history and heritage.
“They are not (George) Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama as Black students tried to enter.
“They are concerned parents worried about critical race theory and fretting that their children will be made to feel bad for being White.”
(Robin Givhan. “Exhausting Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy.” The Washington Post. January 11, 2022.)
With Martin Luther King Jr. Day approaching, Robin Givhan, Senior Critic-at-large for The Washington Post, shared her thoughts about King's legacy and President Biden's recent trip to Atlanta, Georgia. Georgia gave Democrats the edge in the Senate and it was critical in helping Joe Biden win the presidency. It is also the state where election officials have been under extended duress as Republicans demanded recounts, alleged fraud and passed new laws that made voting more of an obstacle course than a walk in the park.
Givhan reported that Biden’s visit included a stop at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, a ceremonial laying of a wreath at the crypt of King and his wife Coretta Scott King, private time with their family and a visit to the historical Ebenezer Baptist Church where King was once senior pastor. Biden also spoke from the Atlanta University Center Consortium, an institute that straddles Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College, from which King graduated.
This year, members of the King family are calling for the national holiday that honors civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to be a day of action as activists try to apply ultimate pressure on Biden and Senate Democrats to pass voting rights reform before it’s too late.
Yet, all politicians praise the legacy of Dr. King, use King's words to support their views, and often distort what the civil rights leader really believed. Can you believe in 2022 we are fighting about guaranteeing voting rights?
Givhan postulates …
“In the midst of this, MLK is inspiration, retort, rallying cry and protective cover. The civil rights leader’s name is the conservative rebuttal to concerns about systemic racism. King’s name is a love song for bootstrapping individualists. It’s akin to a glide path to a safe landing for anyone accused of trying to elevate themselves by diminishing others.”
Then, she shared her a telling comparison …
“King was only 39 years old when he died, and while he was more liberal than radical, it’s hard to imagine that he would be so revered if he were a 30-something activist today – a Black man marching in the streets and advocating for fair wages, voting rights, racial justice and a more equitable form of capitalism. He and his fellow protesters would likely be blamed for stirring the pot and creating upheaval in places where everything was just fine before they showed up spouting their un-American ideas – which is precisely what happened in his day.”
The recasting of King as everyone's friend … just a “warmhearted preacher who wanted everybody to get along” … is what Ibram X. Kendi – American author, professor, and director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University – calls “the second assassination" of Martin Luther King Jr.
Kendi says the "second assassination" of King began days after the first assassination. Almost a third of Americans polled in April 1968 felt that King himself was to blame for his assassination, felt that he had “brought it on himself.” When King was killed, he was one of the most hated people in the United States. Nearly half of Black Americans and three-quarters of white Americans disapproved of him when he stepped out onto that motel balcony. Death threats were a fact of his life.
Kendi concludes …
“King’s first assassins professed to hate him half a century ago. His second assassins profess to revere him. Death threats to King’s legacy are now sold as love songs to his legacy. King is adored in death, literally. King is still hated in life.”
(lbram X. Kendi. “The Second Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.” The Atlantic. October 14, 2021.)
Please read Kendi's entire
article by clicking here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/martin-luther-king-critical-race-theory/620367/
For example, one day before the 2019 MLK holiday, Pence told those watching the CBS Sunday morning politics show, “Face The Nation,” that Trump, in his battle over the border wall and the resulting partial government shutdown, is much like King.
“One of my favorite quotes from Dr. King was, ‘Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy,'” Pence said Sunday. “You think of how he changed America. He inspired us to change through the legislative process, to become a more perfect union.’"
The comment prompted Kendi to tweet: “They “honor” MLK every year by assassinating who he was.” Trump is a figure who can be more readily compared to Bull Connor, said Kendi, who wrote the 2016 National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.
(Janell Ross. “Once again, MLK's legacy is invoked to support issues he wouldn't stand for.” NBC News. January 23, 2019.)
Then consider this example. A small Ohio crowd gathered for a political rally in September 2021. Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, spoke to the crowd. “What the liberals are doing by advancing the cause of critical race theory – they are stomping on the grave of Martin Luther King.”
“Martin Luther King once said that he had a dream that his grandkids would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” Mandel added. “But what you have going on in the government schools by these liberals and the media, by the secular left, by the radical left, they’re trying to make everything about skin color.”
King’s adult children acted to defend their father’s true legacy. Dr. Bernice King, CEO of the King Center in Atlanta, invited Josh Mandel, in response to his Ohio rally speech, “to study my father’s teachings in full and in context. He was not a drum major for a colorblind society, but for justice.”
“Spare me your lectures,” Mandel shot back.
“I don’t see liberals stomping on my father’s grave,” Martin Luther King III tweeted at Mandel. “I see a GOP effort to whitewash history.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mandel tweeted.
Mandel then addressed both of them together on Twitter. “You guys are just charlatans who use CRT to pervert his legacy and make money. He was a leader among leaders who brought people together and tore down racial barriers.”
(Todd Neikirk. “GOP Senate Candidate Josh Mandel Spars With MLK Jr.’s Daughter, Bernice, Over Twitter, Calls Her a ‘Race Profiteer.'” Hillreporter.com. September 24, 2021.)
Kendi says …
“King's modern-day assassins endlessly recite King’s “dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”—as if that was all King said during his 1963 March on Washington speech. They disregard the lines before and after it, when King lamented that his dream was being thwarted by 'vicious racists' in places 'sweltering with the heat of oppression.'
“They disregard King’s paraphrase of his iconic 'dream' line in 1965: that 'one day all of God’s Black children will be respected like his white children.' They disregard King’s recognition that the civil-rights movement did not end racism, leading him to tell an NBC News correspondent on May 8, 1967, that the 'dream that I had [in 1963] has at many points turned into a nightmare.' (Ironically, it was this nightmare of post-civil-rights racial inequality that caused legal scholars in the 1970s to develop critical race theory in law schools, particularly to study and reveal the law’s role in the maintenance of inequality.)”
(lbram X. Kendi. “The Second Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.” The Atlantic. October 14, 2021.)
Kendi believes that King’s modern-day assassins disregard everything he said about education. They disregard King’s worry about the effects of not teaching Black history, including white people internalizing notions of superiority and Black people internalizing notions of inferiority. “The history books, which have almost completely ignored the contribution of the Negro in American history, have only served to intensify the Negroes’ sense of worthlessness and to augment the anachronistic doctrine of white supremacy,” King wrote in 1967.
Kendi says, “The distortions are what’s truly lethal to his legacy, such as the claim that King’s dream was for his four little children to live in a nation where despite numerous racial disparities, no one judges racism or mentions skin color and everyone judges only character, because a hierarchy of character is apparently causing the inequities. King’s nightmare of racism is being presented as King’s dream.”
Those who distort King’s dream are now also distorting critical race theory, and distorting CRT to distort King. “Critical race theory is a Marxist doctrine that rejects the vision of Martin Luther King Jr.,” Donald Trump once said at a Michigan campaign rally. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, “Critical race theory goes against everything Martin Luther King has ever told us, don’t judge us by the color of our skin, and now they’re embracing it.”
Kendi says …
“It is wrong to claim that teachers educating their students about past and present racism 'are stomping on the grave of Martin Luther King,' to quote Mandel. But people such as Trump, McCarthy, and Mandel aren’t simply stomping on King’s grave themselves. These self-professed admirers of King are digging a new grave, and burying King’s body of work within it.”
“Texas state Senator Bryan Hughes said in July (2021) that he was aggrieved by educators teaching 'the inverse of what Dr. King taught us.' But this same legislator proposed a bill weeks earlier that would have removed King’s 'I Have a Dream' speech and 'Letter From Birmingham Jail' from the Texas state curriculum.
“This year (2021), the Tennessee group Moms for Liberty attempted to ban Frances E. Ruffin’s book Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington.
“Pennsylvania’s Central York School District banned Brad Meltzer’s I Am Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Two years ago, the Columbia County School District in Georgia banned Nic Stone’s Dear Martin.
“There’s no contradiction in these elected officials and parents banning books about a historical figure they claim to adore when they adore this historical figure only now that he is dead.”
(lbram X. Kendi. “The Second Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.” The Atlantic. October 14, 2021.)
And, the result, according to Kendi …
“If an anti-racist King can be turned into a color-blind conservator of racism, then anyone and anything from history can be assassinated. Pro-slavery Founding Fathers can be recast as having been 'against slavery.' Racist Confederate rebels can be recast as 'not racist' heroes deserving of monuments in town squares.
“Assassinating the reality of the past assassinates the reality of the present (and creates a new simulated reality).
“In this simulated reality, critical race theory can be warped into being like Jim Crow
“Anti-American insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6 can be presented as pro-American patriots.
“Education can be turned into indoctrination, and indoctrination can be turned into education.
“Teaching children that there’s nothing special about their skin color can be turned into teaching children to hate their skin color.
“People organizing and writing against racism can be portrayed as 'race politics profiteers,' as Mandel sadistically framed Bernice King.”
(lbram X. Kendi. “The Second Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.” The Atlantic. October 14, 2021.)
Conclusion
Many Americans – including those who are well-meaning and especially those who are in power – have propagated the "colorblind" and "melting pot" concepts. These concepts have become so accepted as the vehicle to the realization of King's dream, yet the reality is that Dr. King dreamed of a society that does not judge people by the color of their skin; he did not dream for society to no longer see colors. There is a difference.
Dr. King dreamed of a society that truly believes in the notion that all humans are created equal; he did not dream of a society lacking in diversity wherein all humans are the same. The "colorblind" and "melting pot" ideologies are actually distortions and misappropriations of Dr. King's true dream.
E.J.R. David, Ph.D. – associate professor of Psychology at the University of Alaska Anchorage and 2007 recipient of the American Psychological Association Distinguished Student Research Award – says …
“The adamant refusal by many people to say #BlackLivesMatter and their almost automatic minimization of the very real struggles of Black People when they instead say 'All lives matter,' is a manifestation of this colorblind idea.
“And for those of us who do acknowledge that racism may exist, the typical, quick go-to buzzword of an answer to solve racism is by not seeing race, because seeing race is regarded as the cause of racism.
“Being colorblind also comes in when someone says something like, 'I don't care what your color is, or what race you are ... I don't even see or consider race at all.' Some people even dream for future generations of children to not even know what the color of their skin is, believing that such colorblindness is the solution to racism .
“But dear brothers and sisters, let’s be clear about this one thing: seeing color is not the problem, racism is. Also, seeing color is not the reason racism exists. Even further, seeing color is not racism.”
(E. J. R. David Ph.D. “The Distortion of Martin Luther King's Dream.” Psychology Today. August 11, 2015.)
David explains that racial bias on the individual level is when we regard one color as superior, better, more acceptable, more desirable, and ideal than other colors. This becomes racism if such bias is “supported, normalized, and propagated on the institutional level with policies – whether intentionally or not – that create and maintain the power, voice, representation, and access inequalities that exist in our society.”
So pretending or choosing to not see color will not solve racism; colorblindness will just ignore racism and maintain it. The colorblind ideology does not bring Peoples of Color up and make everyone equal. Instead, it denies their existence, minimizes their experiences, and hides their truths – effectively hiding their identities. And, keep in mind, these identities are important racial, ethnic, and cultural parts of who they are.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not conceive a dream of a colorless America. He certainly didn't envision right-wing nationalists like Donald Trump and Josh Mandel distorting critical race theory and suppressing minority history … even limiting precious voting rights.
I feel the most important observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day for White Americans is to reject the notion that King's dream has been realized, search for the truth about the continued existence of systemic racism, and dedicate themselves to building a better multiracial democracy where Whiteness is not tied to one’s ability to experience the richness of a life well lived.
After all, as Dr. Ted Thornhill, associate professor of sociology and founding director of the Center for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at Florida Gulf Coast, points out …
“Decent human beings don’t quote Dr. Martin Luther King, and then support and enact racist laws and policies that undermine the right to vote, the right to protest and the freedom to learn an accurate and comprehensive account of the nation’s history …
“We should be highly suspicious of anyone whose commentary on racial matters is predicated on or reducible to an a historical, decontextualized and cynical recitation of the second half of one sentence from Dr. King’s 'I Have a Dream' speech These people don’t care about Dr. King, his work or his legacy.
“In fact, they are the ideological offspring – many are likely the biological offspring – of exactly those White people who hated Dr. King, and fought with vigor, often violently, to impede everything he and many others sought to realize: the Beloved Community.”
(Dr. Ted Thornhill. “The Racial Reality: Republicans wield Dr. King’s words as weapons of whiteness.” www.news-press.com. June 25, 2021.)
From “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Martin Luther King Jr. (April 16, 1963)
Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.
It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."
I wish you had commended the Negro demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman of Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride the segregated buses, and responded to one who inquired about her tiredness with ungrammatical profundity, "My feets is tired, but my soul is rested." They will be young high school and college students, young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience's sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.
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