Martin Luther King Day
Posted by
Kevin
Martin Luther King is the greatest American to have ever lived. The contest is not in doubt. Dr. King was the first American to effectively demand of the country that it live up to its ideals. He demanded that White America start actually trying to be America, and in many ways, he succeeded. This country, while still far from its ideals, is closer to them because of Dr. King’s work. The Civil Rights movement pre-dated Dr. King by sixty to eighty years, depending on how you wish to view history, but Dr. King built upon the successes of those earlier movements and achieved a remarkable breakthrough. Dr. King and his movement refused to accept that White Americans would not live up to the ideals in their Constitution and persevered until, at least officially, they did. The struggle is far from over, but Dr. King and his movement achieved more towards the goal of true equality than probably anyone before or since.
Some links:
Dave Neiwert’s series on eliminationism in the United States continues with a look at Sundown Towns.
Robert Stein draws a line between Dr. King’s work and the rise of Barack Obama.
“Martin Luther King is the greatest American to have ever lived”
Baloney
Comment 1/15/2007
Thanks much for the link. Unfortunately, because of a screwup, I had to change the URL this morning. It’s now at this link.
Comment 1/15/2007
Dave:
Link fixed.
Comment 1/15/2007
Dave
And so is the spelling of your name. Sorry about that.
Comment 1/15/2007
Dr. King was able to spearhead significant, revolutionary even, social change while never wavering from his code of non-violence. Truly a remarkable accomplishment from a remarkable man.
Comment 1/15/2007
While King was certainly an important figure in the country’s history, saying he’s the single most important American ever is ridiculous. Even within the narrow field of abolition/civil rights there are people I’d rank as more important than King, such as Frederick Douglas.
Comment 1/15/2007
James Earl Ray did the biggest harm he could do to this country when he killed MLK. If MLK had lived he would have just been another Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. He would have refuted his message of equality and joined in with the other “civil rights” leaders who have embraced Affirmative Discrimination. His adultery in his marriage and his plagarism in his doctoral thesis gave him no moral standing as a good man.
My apologies for saying that your statement that he was the greatest American was baloney. I apologize to baloney. Baloney is good. A better word would have been “crap.”
Comment 1/15/2007
Fred…….what a stunning display of hatred……
Comment 1/15/2007
Stormy
I can see the argument, I think the fact that Dr. King was indisputably and by far the most effective civil rights leader pushes him to the top by an easy measure. And since I think that civil rights are the most important to the health and well being of the country, the Dr. King is the most important American.
Comment 1/16/2007
Fred you really, really are horrible sometimes. And I say that as someone for whom affirmative action is one of the few major areas where I completely disagree with mainstream liberalism.
You assert as a fact that MLK would have eventually turned in favour of it. What do you base that on? Because as far as I can see, you have two options. Either you think that racial equality necessitates affirmative action (which I deny), in which case denouncing the latter means denouncing the former. Or you think that all black liberals will eventually support affirmative action. Either way, it looks like you are a horrible little racist.
I would gladly welcome another explanation from you as to how you are so sure what MLK would have done that does not make you a horrible little racist.
Comment 1/16/2007
“Either way, it looks like you are a horrible little racist.”
And you are a horrible little liar.
Comment 1/16/2007
Go on then Fred, tell me why. Give me an alternative.
Comment 1/17/2007
“Go on then Fred, tell me why. Give me an alternative.”
Tell you what?
Comment 1/17/2007
The following is from an article by Paul Rockwell, a fervert King supporter. He is responded to those who have said King did not and would not support Affirmative Discrimination.
“Setting the record straight
The exploitation of King’s name, the distortion of his teachings for political gain, is an ugly development. The term “affirmative action” did not come into currency until after King’s death “but it was King himself, as chair of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who initiated the first successful national affirmative action campaign: “Operation Breadbasket.”
In Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities, King staffers gathered data on the hiring patterns of corporations doing business in black communities, and called on companies to rectify disparities. “At present, SCLC has Operation Breadbasket functioning in some 12 cities, and the results have been remarkable,” King wrote (quoted in Testament of Hope, James Washington, ed.), boasting of “800 new and upgraded jobs [and] several covenants with major industries.”
King was well aware of the arguments used against affirmative action policies. As far back as 1964, he was writing in Why We Can’t Wait: “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.”
King supported affirmative action”;type programs because he never confused the dream with American reality. As he put it, “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro” to compete on a just and equal basis (quoted in Let the Trumpet Sound, by Stephen Oates).
In a 1965 Playboy interview, King compared affirmative action”;style policies to the GI Bill: “Within common law we have ample precedents for special compensatory programs…. And you will remember that America adopted a policy of special treatment for her millions of veterans after the war.”
In King’s teachings, affirmative action approaches were not “reverse discrimination” or “racial preference.” King promoted affirmative action not as preference for race over race (or gender over gender), but as a preference for inclusion, for equal oportunity, for real democracy. Nor was King’s integration punitive: For him, integration benefited all Americans, male and female, white and non”;white alike. And contrary to Gingrich, King insisted that, along with individual efforts, collective problems require collective solutions.
Like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, King viewed affirmative action as a means to achieving a truly egalitarian and color”;blind society. To destroy the means, the gradual process by which equality is achieved, destroys the dream itself. And the use of King’s name in this enterprise only adds derision to destruction.”
Paul Rockwell is a librarian, media activist and writer living in Oakland.
Comment 1/17/2007
Pejar:
E-mail me. tgirschleanleft.com
I’d like to discuss affirmative action with you. My position is that while it’s a far-from-perfect solution, nobody has yet suggested a viable alternative to correct the lingering effects of institutional racism. That’s getting off-topic, however, so please e-mail so we can discuss.
Comment 1/17/2007
“My position is that while it’s a far-from-perfect solution, nobody has yet suggested a viable alternative to correct the lingering effects of institutional racism.”
At least you are honest enough to admit that you believe that discrimination against people due to the color of their skin is okay in certain instances. Most liberals won’t even admit that much.
Comment 1/18/2007