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6 thoughts on Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

  1. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/29/1011562/-Most-of-you-have-no-idea-what-Martin-Luther-King-actually-did

    As someone who obviously doesn’t have any personal experience to speak to this, this piece struck me (in my comparative ignorance) as an important pushback against the “MLK for all, especially white people” co-opting that always happens.

    I think it’s also a vivid illustration of what non-violence actually meant in practice – non-violence in response to constant, severe white (state) violence, not the false picture of white & black together non-violently holding hands for a new future, or of black people as previously savages who just needed an articulate non-violent representative in order for civilised white people to listen to them.

    (Side note: didn’t know that Hillary Clinton said that about Dr King. Ugh.)

    1. I like this piece and I like the message about race-based domestic terrorism and how the Rainbow Togetherness message watered-down and frankly White catering.

      But I raised a brow a little, because I was raised with great detail about the suffering of black Americans from the other side. My grandfather grew up in a Sundown town and has told me stories about it, as well as some of our family history as Klansmen. My local area regularly produces pretty frightening white supremacists that frankly are desperate to resurrect race-based terrorism and occasionally actually commit race-base acts of terrorism (Hate Crime isn’t a big enough term. It’s fucking terrorism.)

      Most of this stuff isn’t aimed at me, and I will never understand what that is like and I will not pretend to. But, even as a white person, I’m very well aware of the legacy.

      And I don’t live in the deep South, mind you, I live in Illinois, the Midwest.

    2. This was an absolutely great read and I was coming here to post it. I think it articulates so well many of the problems I have with the co-opting of King by many white people in the media.

    1. You know, I get that posting random links on random articles in kinda your shtick, but especially here it’s just disrespectful. Would you know it off?

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