In winter the snow falls. In autumn leaves change color and drop off the trees. Summer's days are long and hot. And in January on or around the MLK federal holiday, some conservative media outlet, usually but not always the Wall Street Journal, will deploy someone to argue that MLK was colorblind, didn't support affirmative action and lined up with other modern day conservative stances.
This is of course similar to saying that Jesus' primary message expressed in the Gospels was "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." It's the BIG LIE. This year the dubious honor fell to one Coleman Hughes who makes more fact free assertions in one column than I ever thought was possible.
In this view, King’s dream of a colorblind America—where the content of our character matters more than the color of our skin—is hampered by progressives’ focus on checking white privilege and stoking black grievance. With regard to the role that racial identity should play in politics, King was unequivocal: First and foremost we are human beings, not members of races. The verbal tic of modern racial-justice activists—“As a black man . . .”—would sound foreign on his lips. Even when fighting explicitly racist policies, he deployed universal principles rather than a tribal grievance narrative.
King also highlighted counterproductive behavioral patterns in the black community—the third rail for today’s racial activists. The current view among progressives is that cultural self-criticism is noble when whites do it but “victim blaming” when blacks do it. In contrast, King held that regardless of racial identity, “one of the sure signs of maturity is the ability to rise to the point of self-criticism,” as expressed in a 1960 address.
King’s contemporary counterpoints were the Nation of Islam and the black-power movement, which emphasized racial division over common humanity. King didn’t mince words when addressing these movements in a 1960 speech at DePauw University. “Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy, and God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men,” he said. “God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and in the creation of a society where all men can live together as brothers.”
As Paul Harvey might say, and now for the rest of the story.
MLK also said or wrote the following:
"I am sorry to have to say to you that the vast majority of white Americans are racist, either consciously or unconsciously."
"But this white failure to comprehend the depth and dimension of the Negro problem is far from being peculiar to Government officials..It seems to be a malady even among those whites who like to regard themselves as 'enlightened'.."
"America is going to hell, too, if she fails to bridge the gulf that separates blacks from whites, the United States and Europe from Asia, Africa, and Latin America."
"[I had] deep affection for Malcolm. He was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had great concern for the problems that we face as a race."
"Men of the white West..have grown up in a racist culture, and their thinking is colored by that fact..they don't respect anyone who is not white."
"There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say , ' Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark,' but will curse and damn you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children!"
"And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?"
"Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro."
Now many of those quotes coming from a black religious leader today would see that man dragged through the mud on twitter, denounced by the majority of white media pundits and talk show hosts and unfriended by would be presidential nominees. And every single solitary black person with a media platform that was ultimately controlled by whites would be threatened to condemn the comments or else. Even the building janitor would have to say he disagreed with such words.
Martin Luther King was a soldier in the struggle against white supremacy. He never ever wavered on that. He disagreed with some people on the most effective or most moral way to combat white supremacy.
King never ever allowed himself to be used as a cudgel to argue to Black Americans either that they were responsible for the discrimination against them or that such discrimination did not exist, two beliefs which are the twin guiding lights of much modern conservatism.
Conservatives try to claim MLK for themselves or water down his message every year because it is apparently embarrassing for a few of the semi-reasonable ones to admit that conservatives at the time, and more than a few today, supported segregation, cheered King's murder and were opposed to any change in American society.
William F. Buckley founded the National Review in part to defend white supremacy, segregation and denying Blacks the vote. Think about that. The entire modern post war conservative intellectual movement is rooted in protecting white dominance over black.
People, there is data and evidence on all of this. Don't let Rupert Murdoch and his lickspittle lackeys change history. All quotes are sourced from Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream Or A Nightmare by James Cone. If you have any interest in history at all you should have this book in your library. Read it. Obviously Coleman Hughes hasn't read it. He shows that he understands next to nothing about the times during which MLK and Malcolm lived.
