Harris Parry conflates heroism with martyrdom and trivializes civil-rights by dissing Snowden for not being King or Mandela Political Science Professor and MSNBC commentator, Melissa Harris Parry’s comparison of Edward Snowden to Martin Luther King is ridiculous on multiple levels, but since she took it there, let’s follow her logic. Her commentary is here: youtube/watch?v=VUvDJHCyj9Q No, MLK did not “run” to other countries... and we all know the outcome. However, his student, Kwame Ture, did. Does Harris-Parry consider the SNCC co-founder less of a hero? Ture is most famous for popularizing the term “Black Power,” the ideological evolution and response to the flaws of what we can call “civil-rightsism.” The latter relies on the conscience of the oppressor to realize the error of their ways, but Ture blew the whistle on whitey explaining the shift in movement philosophy when he proclaimed, “you are not nice guys. We have found you out.” Black power, it has conveniently been forgotten, was the ideology that the politically mature MLK outlined and embraced, as we can read in his most important text—no, not “I Have a Dream,”—his third and final book, “Where do we go from Here.” I for one, feel that history would have been better served if King had fled to socialist Africa, as Du Bois did before him and Ture did after him. When Public Enemy released their revenge fantasy music video, “By the Time I get to Arizona,” in which they assassinate that state’s governor for refusing to honour MLK day, some criticized them for glorifying the precise means for social change that King rejected. But we do not need to agree with King’s methods to claim his struggle, and as Chuck D said in response to the criticism, “if King dodged that bullet, he might have thought differently.” Snowden exposed the criminality of the US government against its own citizens. That makes him a hero to those concerned with civil rights; Period. Harris-Parry’s rejection of this fact because Snowden subsequently sought political asylum rather than accepting life in prison amounts to her conflating heroism with martyrdom. Perry suggests that a real “hero” would return to face the consequences dealt out by the same government that labeled MLK a terrorist in his day, the same government that has recently branded Assata Shakur—another real Black American hero—a “terrorist,” and that has now openly affirmed the right to murder anyone anywhere in the world, American or otherwise, after branding them as such. While our martyrs are heroes, not all our hero’s need be martyrs. I urge Prof. Harris-Parry to visit Cuba and deepen her political consciousness under the tutelage of big sister Assata, before someone else makes that same trip intent on collecting our criminal government’s bounty by martyring another one of our heroes. PS: I wonder if Harris-Parry thinks Mandela, another hero whom she measures Snowden against, would not have chosen 27 years of political asylum over imprisonment if he could have managed it?
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 02:40:44 +0000
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