Why We Need to Reclaim MLK

[sheshe2]

Last edited Thu May 14, 2015, 11:57 PM - Edit history (1)

On this national holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. many of us nationwide took to the streets in “reclaim MLK” protests. Why a need to reclaim the legacy of Dr.King? Part of it has to do with that speech.





(Photo from Sean Elias)

You know the one. The “I got a dream speech,” as someone referred to it recently. The speech that everyone half-remembers and selectively quotes every January. Based on a collective quoting-out-of-context from that speech, King has been elevated to a patriotic mascot praising America’s relentless and inevitable progress on racism. In his book, The Speech, Gary Younge lays out the story behind the speech which was, in fact, a searing indictment of American racism. Younge describes our misremembering this way:

“Half a century after the March on Washington and the famous “I Have a Dream” speech, the event has been neatly folded into America’s patriotic mythology. Relatively few people know or recall that the Kennedy administration tried to get organizers to call it off; that the FBI tried to dissuade people from coming; that racist senators tried to discredit the leaders; that twice as many Americans had an unfavorable view of the march as a favorable one. Instead, it is hailed not as a dramatic moment of mass, multiracial dissidence, but as a People forget, too, that King was very nearly a social pariah among most white Americans. In 1966, twice as many Americans had an unfavorable opinion of him as a favorable one.

Much less frequently quoted on this holiday is MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in which he writes that:

“the great stumbling block in [the] stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”

Read More: http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2015/01/19/reclaim-mlk/

[napkinz]

1. "the great stumbling block in stride toward freedom"

[sheshe2]

2. And this.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

[babylonsister]

3. He sure was prescient. I know progress is slow, but

the speed can be agonizing.

[Number23]

4. Yes. I don't know if it's a "reclaiming" so much as a concerted effort to really not allow people

to white wash (pun intended), distort or minimize King's purpose and his legacy. He needs to be taught in schools K-12 and beyond, the REAL King, not this sanitized, romanticized version.

Maybe if he was, I wouldn't keep reading on DU and other places about how "he was more concerned with class than race," or that he was killed for his views on ZYX issue, not because of his life's work to end American apartheid, or that "the vast majority of white people loved him." Because as a black woman who grew up hearing about this majestic man, it is not just insulting to see his views and his passion so twisted and lied about, it is actually offensive.

twice as many Americans had an unfavorable view of the march as a favorable one. Instead, it is hailed not as a dramatic moment of mass, multiracial dissidence, but as a People forget, too, that King was very nearly a social pariah among most white Americans.

A few years ago I would read that and thought "duh, who doesn't know this?" but seeing how much time and effort has gone into pretending that this never happened, I now think that it's important to remind people of this as often as possible.

[F4lconF16]

5. One comment I have

And I won't say much as I am still learning, and I am white:

During all the community meetings I have gone to, the black activists leading those meetings have repeatedly made a huge point to emphasize Dr. King's views on class and economics. They sought to remind us that though he was fighting for racial equality, that equality could not exist in the current capitalist system. They wanted us to remember that he was shot not for his actions against racism, but for supporting strikes (though I was kinda thinking he got lucky he wasn't killed for the racism beforehand, honestly).

I don't say this to disagree with what you're saying, just to communicate what I keep hearing from black activists and leaders. John Carlos at a community panel finished it by imploring us to remember why MLK was killed, and that MLK believed that not only was radical action necessary, but that the underlying economic structure had to change. Carlos encouraged the I5 shutdown because it stopped the trucks and the walmart trailers (it may not have been him, but another of the activists there, I forget).

I think a big problem with the way many people see MLK's words is that he did not say economics was more important than racial equality (tell that to the dead children, men, and women of color) but that economic equality and racial equality could not exist without one another, and were highly intertwined.

(also, agree that white people never loved MLK for the most part--that's utter bs. He was not a popular man.)

[Number23]

7. That is simply an amazing set of points

I think a big problem with the way many people see MLK's words is that he did not say economics was more important than racial equality (tell that to the dead children, men, and women of color) but that economic equality and racial equality could not exist without one another, and were highly intertwined.

Which is a point that so many black people have made over and over again. The co-opting of King's message by whites that he was moving away from civil rights to more economic issues underscores their inability to understand how intertwined race and class are in this country and also shows their ignorance of King's message and how utterly devoted he was to the civil rights movement.

There is just no separating the two -- race and class, and especially not for a black man in 1950s and 60s America. When I see people talking about how he advocated for strikes for the Memphis sanitation workers, I'm sure if you were to do a survey of Memphis sanitation workers TODAY there would be heavy minority representation and I'm sure that would have only been amplified if you went back to the 1960s. He was not suggesting college professors or hedge fund managers strike. The reason he picked sanitation workers I have no doubt would have been because LARGE numbers of them would have been minorities and struggling to survive. There is really no separating race from class and those that put class above race ignore massive and still continuing bits of America's history that black people, and certainly not Dr. King, would not have had the luxury of ignoring themselves.

[Flatulo]

6. How very relevant today these words are...

"Shallow misunderstanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."

I think this is the message I'm hearing from the black community today.