As I said in my post of two hours ago (the newly discovered 1964 speech of MLK), I had prepared some reflections for MLK Day on Sunday night before I retired. These notes, which fit in nicely with the MLK speech I heard early this morning on Democracy Now, are now typed up in a coherent form, and I present these reflections here. (Concerning my comments, see especially what MLK said about a long way to go concerning “voting rights” and “economic justice.”) ______________________________________________________ “We have come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go before the problem is solved…. All of this reveals to us that we have not achieved the level of brotherhood—we have not achieved the brotherhood that we need and that we must have in our nation. We still have a long, long way to go.” –Dr. Martin Luther King (1964 London Speech) It seems like Martin Luther King Day came right on time this year, given the French Charlie Hebdo “terrorist attack” and the issue it engendered about “free speech.” I’m talking about the terrific HYPOCRISY of it all! More *hypocrisy* today by those who pay lip service to MLK’s legacy but secretly hate what the slain Civil Rights leader stands for. I’m referring to all those former liberal Dixiecrats, those present “color-blind” liberals, and the closet white supremacists of the Right. I’ve come to a conclusion about just what bothers them about MLK. Of course, it’s all about *racism*, but I’m thinking about a particular form of white hatred against the MLK and the Civil Rights movement. These white supremacists harbor a vile envy of a suppressed minority, because they secretly know that their oppressive race could never muster up the commitment, self-sacrifice, and heroic courage to do what the blacks did in the face of the most ruthless treatment meted out to them and not fight back, and yet overcoming. The white supremacists had the brute force, but the blacks had the “soul power.” Yes, this is what I think really gets to them! Yes, it’s easy to pay lip service to Dr. King on this special day, feigning deep regret about the KKK murders, the bombings, the police beatings, the dogs and the fire hoses. Easy, when the Civil Rights champion is safely dead (and kept ineffectual by a co-option of his legacy). Yet the very same white hypocrites, who are offended because they somehow attract the epithet of “racist,” continue to deny to the black population the same rights (like “voting rights” and economic rights) that MLK struggled for. For instance, they fail to see any contradiction to MLK’s legacy today (a) in denying that black people have anything to complain about when their children are routinely murdered with impunity by white cops and get away with it, (b) in making sure that young blacks are incarcerated at a rate way over that of whites, (c) in helping the Supreme Court invalidate a crucial component of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, and (d) actively suppressing the black vote by all manner of malfeasance, (e) continuing an economic disparity that has been accurately called “the new Jim Crow.” There are some black leaders who are ambivalent about the federal holiday of Martin Luther King Day, criticizing that this one day reserved for remembering their slain Civil Rights leader is a token gesture that mitigates the daily revolution for black emancipation that MLK struggled for. In my opinion, MLK Day at least gives the opportunity for those born long after MLK’s time (and those old enough but who need to be reminded) to hear and see his speeches and witness the film footage of the American apartheid state’s brutal repression. The white “color-blind” population needs to be reminded what MLK and the Civil Rights movement were up against: a Northern white liberal establishment who, out of moral cowardness, turned a blind eye to the institutional racism blacks faced, and on the other hand a hard-core Southern white-supremacist order that enforced segregation and reacted with the most vicious police-state methods when blacks challenged it. This in itself may be enough to justify the national holiday. And it just may be that in focusing at least once a year on MLK’s legacy there will be in the national consciousness a new understanding of how the past civil rights era is coextensive with today’s “racial issues.” In other words, whites may have an opportunity to put 2 and 2 together and call it forward to what’s happening in our “new Jim Crow” era. And who knows, some of them may ask the $64,000 question concerning MLK’s legacy: Is it enough to know what MLK stood for in the past without knowing what would he do today? Ah ,theres the rub! Asking that big question leads to asking the right dissenting questions about our country; such as, If MLK were alive today, what would he have to say about the critical issues of our time—about this country’s foreign and domestic policies; about what’s really going on in our post-Civil Rights, color-blind era. For instance, if in the Vietnam War era MLK extended his civil rights struggle to include an anti-war struggle and was bold enough to proclaim in April of 1967 that America is “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” what would he say today in a social milieu of the never-ending “war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan? What would he say about the policy of “torture” that comes out of this? And given that MLK likewise extended his racial justice message to include “economic equality,” what would he say about the situation of black people in this country today? I’m afraid that because of the answers here that those in power, who pay lip service MLK on this day, are more than glad he’s safely dead. No, if MLK were with us today, these white hypocrites (and some black ones), would try to silence him and demand that he go before the nation and apologize for his anti-American rhetoric (for saying that “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: My own Government, I can not be Silent.”). But the fact of the matter is that what MLK said back in 1967 is even truer today! I can hear them now—the white detractors of a present way too radical MLK (who yet hypocritically pay lip service to him on this day). There’s a term they use on the far-Right these days for those who refuse to “be Silent” and have the nerve to call out this county on its wrongdoings. They’re called “the hate America crowd.” If MLK were alive today—and their ilk made sure that he wouldn’t be—they would make MLK its poster boy! No, behind all the hypocritical facade of honoring MLK today is the reality that no one who, like Dr. King, embodies the principles of love, justice, and revolutionary liberation will be allowed to live long in America. Better to do away with such a dangerous rebel-rouser and give him a whitewashed legacy! Gandalfs Beard democracynow.org/2015/1/19/exclusive_newly_discovered_1964_mlk_speech
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 02:45:06 +0000
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