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It's MLK Day, the day in America when politicians who absolutely would have opposed Martin Luther King Jr. quote him to cast a sheen of legitimacy on their causes.
MLK Day is also the day when people say they are inspired by MLK Jr., despite undermining his legacy.
Left: MLK Jr. at the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Right: The person most responsible for blocking a restoration of VRA, refusing to even give it a vote in the Senate.
Left: MLK Jr. at the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Right: The person most responsible for blocking a restoration of VRA, refusing to even give it a vote in the Senate.
MLK Day is the day when people like Ted Cruz seek to repurpose MLK Jr., pretending that a man who led protests and argued for radical notions of social equality is actually a conservative hero, alongside Churchill and Reagan.
As an immigrant, one of the most insightful things I read was Huntington's Promise of Disharmony: the idea that American politics was a long battle between its ideals and actions. MLK Day is a prime example of people trying to claim those ideals *despite* their actions.
MLK has become a latter day Founding Father - everyone claims some nominal allegiance to him in order to legitimize their political standing.
But he is also too close to us for this to really work - the issues he fought for are out issues today. He would have been 91 this year.
But he is also too close to us for this to really work - the issues he fought for are out issues today. He would have been 91 this year.
At the center of MLK's philosophy is a call for robust government intervention on issues of voting rights, racial discrimination, fair wages, housing and other social rights. And so it becomes more patently hypocritical to claim him if you opposed his stances on those issues.
Anyway, happy MLK Day. If we allow him to be turned into a silent statue, we effectively give up on learning from the real person.
Feel free to reply with the worst examples of MLK misappropriations on this day.
Feel free to reply with the worst examples of MLK misappropriations on this day.
Whole thread of MLK misappropriations here. Rand Paul is esp. bad since he suggested that the Civil Rights Act was excessive: “It’s not all about race relations. It is about controlling property, ultimately.” https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/02/politics/rand-paul-civil-rights-act/index.html https://twitter.com/josephmullenfl/status/1351176976795623425?s=20
The White House chose today to release its "1776" report, which argues that MLK and the civil rights movement were betrayed by undefined "programs" and "identity politics" which are, in fact, the legacy of John Calhoun. Just insane revisionist history.
