Tim Wise: "Conservatives Would Ban Teaching the Real MLK "

[ancianita]

This is one great essay -- Tim Wise at his finest.

We must never let the Right off the racial hook. When they were historically the pre- and post-Civil War Democrats, they made sure their racism was systemically economic. Then they set social policy to reinforce that economic system, killed Lincoln and drove out Johnson to end ten years of democratic Reconstruction.

Today, Biden will not save the soul of America except through the voting rights of the longest fighters for democracy, Black Americans. Since 1619, long before 1776, Black Americans' equality was the soul of America.

As Black Americans go, so America goes.

King insisted that “White America needs to understand that it is poisoned to its soul by racism.” And when discussing the urban riots that had rocked several Northern cities during the summer, he made clear where the blame resided:

The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance, and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes, but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society…he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society…if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man...


... even examined as a historical perspective anti-CRT laws would require such matters to be discussed “impartially.”

Assuming teachers felt comfortable teaching the material at all, students would have to hear a “balanced” presentation of the America King was facing. Though this wouldn’t require presenting the pro-segregationist position (that would run afoul of the legislation’s prohibitions on material advocating discrimination), it could require students to consider the views of whites who, according to polling at the time, thought there was no race problem in America, and that Black folks were exaggerating their suffering.

In other words, the laws would require students to consider respectfully the opinions of whites who denied systemic racism, not merely in 2021, but even in 1961 (or 1850 for that matter)— which is to say, the opinions of fools.

Either way, conservative activists and lawmakers are leading an assault on truth and memory. We should confront them with the real MLK and force them to admit they would cancel him if they had their way. They should be required to publicly acknowledge that they disavow his views — the views of perhaps this nation’s only secular saint.

Finally, we should confront white Americans with King’s words from his last book, Where Do We Go From Here? — words that succinctly explain the right’s vicious attempt at censorship.

In that final volume, King lamented the unwillingness of most whites to “re-educate themselves out of racial ignorance,” because, as he explained, with words every bit as relevant today as they were 53 years ago:

It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.

MLK was right. The American right is wrong. And now is the time for everyone to choose a side.

https://aninjusticemag.com/conservatives-would-ban-teaching-the-real-mlk-1aad3b179b50

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[blm]

2. Today's GOP is not conservative. They are Rabid Reactionaries.

[ancianita]

3. Today's GOP conserves the corporate project of profiting by 'terror management.'

Racism and 'fear of a black planet' and 'the great white replacement' are among the reactionary tools of their corporate toolbox.

You're right. Democrats are the true conservatives today.