This began as a comment in yet another diary that does not clearly distinguish between insulting President Obama and advocating for just policy and change. While I continue to respond each time I see a civil rights leader appropriated for a disturbing pattern of behavior with decidedly racially privileged messaging, the timing of the latest appropriation, on the day that was intended to honor him with the formal unveiling of his memorial, moved me to make the comment a full diary.
If you are interested in engaging, you are welcome, regardless of view, but not regardless of tone! Please ask yourself - "how would Dr. King say this?" before posting. Please add a quote from Dr. King to your comments as a tribute to this day.
Much more below the fold...
I am concerned and confused by the ongoing appropriation here of Black civil rights leaders as symbols for a predominantly White movement with strong intonations of entitlement as well as a significant core group who openly displays contempt for the nation's first Black president. While it surely happens elsewhere, I am an active member of this community, and this is the place I want to address.
To all those who have said it, yes, it is so true! Dr. King would not have been silent now, not in the face of the poverty and inequality and injustice that continues to saturate our nation and our world. More importantly to me, Dr. King would not have been inactive and, more specifically, was not only critical and not constructive from the comfort of the sidelines.
He would not, and did not, vilify, deride or condescend towards even those who came at him with violence, much less those who shared his mission but not his strategy.
I am aware that part of privilege and entitlement is not examining one's own choices and immediately downplaying or discrediting challenges of those choices by "others."
I also am aware that part of privilege and entitlement is truly not knowing how one's actions are received, and what history and protocol one is impinging on, or even violating, because consideration and understanding of "others" is not something that is routinely taught or valued in mainstream culture.
So I write this now-diary hoping to stave, to illuminate, to communicate on this special day. To anyone who reads my comment and is confused, angered or intrigued:
Please reflect on the full history of historical figures before assigning them a modern parallel. To be specific, if the continued personal attacks on President Obama here at this site and throughout our progressive community are examples of "not being silent," please know that Dr. King is not the symbol you are waiting for and would not have advocated such divisive and entitled behavior.
Please also contemplate the distinction between American heroes from whom you can learn, and whom you celebrate, and those heroes you may not yet fully understand and consider ongoing research. Dr. King is everyone's American hero. But he is not everyone's personal symbol in their struggle - unless that struggle is represented by selflessness, life-threatening and ceaseless activism, dignified protest, and patience and respect for all with whom you come in contact, even as you march towards justice.
I was just in DC for the MLK Monument memorial dinner. Before wrapping any community in the flag of honor that association with his great legacy affords, please finally consider asking yourself this. Would you have approached Dr. King's family at this event to let them know that, in the name of their father/brother/uncle, you routinely call President Obama a failure, a socialist, a puppet, a corporatist and a coward? That this is how you exercise your voice for justice?
And if you did so, would you expect them to swell with gratitude and pride?
Criticism of the President's actual policies, coupled with research and even solutions, is welcome and necessary. But the continued conflation here of personal insults against his person with speaking out for truth and freedom is, at least, one of three things: intentionally manipulative, offensively disingenuous or so naively entitled that it will continue to evoke this and similar responses.
If you have not yet been shot at, had your life threatened, marched thousands, or even hundreds, towards a danger-filled doorway towards freedom, if you have not placed country before family, if you have not been imprisoned for your beliefs and the actions they evoked, if you have not devised workshops and trained thousands of followers on how to lay their own lives on the line at your word, if you do not each day place your head down while reflecting on the lives you are changing city-/state-/nation-/worldwide and simultaneously listening for rustling leaves, broken glass, screeching tires and guns being cocked, if you have not abandoned your home and career for a cause that is greater than yours, if you have not sat down with both your enemies and your supporters to tirelessly campaign for rights you yourself may never enjoy...
If you, indeed, have done nothing but write a series of blog posts with defensive, profanity-laced comments in your responses, and will not have hundreds of thousands to millions weeping because progress, in your absence, may, in fact, end...then you are not fully an heir to this particular legacy of "not being silent." You may, perhaps, dine with friends of different backgrounds, make sure your children are loving and tolerant and treat all people of all color as equal. You may be an heir, then, to Dr. King's dream of racial equality. But that does not grant you the entire estate of his accomplishments to assign to your actions, particularly those that directly contradict his teachings and his choices.
If you still believe that you have a right and responsibility to claim Dr. King's mantle as your own, do you understand that you are equating posts about "Obambi" to the scope, the scale, the impact and the tone of this?
I understand that you may feel passionately that Obama has failed you personally and, perhaps, also has failed the country. I understand, as well, that you may feel that those who do not feel Obama has failed them personally are deluded or blindly following him due to race. I understand that you may not yet be able to examine the entitlement such a point of view represents, that your personal disappointment is valid and, in fact, objectively true, while our satisfaction with the president is not creditable and clearly must be subjective.
But when you look at these images, and this is a direct and literal question...do you sincerely believe that your angry/snarky/snide blog posts challenging the president's personal qualities of strength, courage, conviction and honor are the direct descendants of the civil rights movement? Do you see that your writing lacks solution, embrace, scholarship, sacrifice and forward impetus? Do you at all see the irony of appropriating the leaders, efforts and intentions of a movement designed to give people of color - and not just Black ones - in this country the status of equality as adults in this country...while your own language is the modern, dog whistling equivalent of calling him a "boy"?
Do you not see the irony of taking Dr. King's legacy for your own...rather than recognizing that the true and acting heir is the president himself that you so disparage and disrespect?
Do you, at least, understand that an entire community of people not only recognizes the irony but the offense of this?
I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest.
- Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963
If you are feeling a bit warm right now and, possibly, itching to respond, please ask yourself this first. Am I holding myself to the highest possible standard of discourse here? If the most I know about Dr. King is the "I Have a Dream" speech, which I've actually not seen in its entirety, do I still feel inside that my opinion about this is the equivalent of those who studied African-American history, marched in the movement itself, lost family members to the fires and bullets and dogs and grew up with their pictures and stories personally shared? Is the strongest reaction I can provide here one of entitlement and self-focus, along the lines of "Dr. King is for all Americans!" or "Don't you dare call me a racist!" Would it be useful and respectful to do a little more research before wading into the comment stream to assert my indignation and authority, although it is based primarily on my own sense of importance in the universe?
To condense for all who care to know, this piece is to clarify that the legacy of a civil rights leader is not a Pez doll to dispense credibility to anyone who connects to a quote. One must also directly and visibly connect to the choices, actions, tone, mission and values of that leader before claiming the legacy, at whatever scale that occurs.
Yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater that is not, indeed, on fire is not a pillar of free speech. And yelling "Caver in Chief" at our nation's sitting president is not advancing policy or fighting for justice. Please don't discredit and dishonor the memory of our national heroes by either ignoring, overlooking or not understanding the difference.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If, upon reading this, you feel that you are being called a racist, can you please write down the train of thought that led you from this language to that conclusion and share it in a comment? Understanding that process is so important to racial discourse, and for me, at least, it is not yet clear.
If, upon reading this, you feel that your (or another's) posts that offer critical analysis of the policies of the president and his administration are being reduced to personal attacks on the president, can you please share the link(s) to the constructive post(s) on policy without name-calling? It is possible that these posts are flying far below the radar since the ad hominem writings get so much buzz.
If, upon reading this, you feel that you are being told you cannot share in Dr. King's legacy if you are not Black, can you please take a breath and read the specificity and detail in this diary?
If upon reading this, you feel that I am angry at you, please know that I am, instead, worried for you and for our community and for those in our country who do not see the instances and ramifications of unexamined privilege that continue to roadblock our progress. Please also know that I am very firm in my tone and language because I do not take our history or our present state of disturbing discourse lightly.
If upon reading this, you want to share how you, yourself, have been inspired by Dr. King and other heroes of the movement, please, please, please do, with links to how we can participate and support you!
Visit the King Institute for history, papers, speeches and much more.
UPDATE
I've changed the opening line from "conflates" to "does not distinguish between" to be even more specific. It is my concern that those who only attack the president are not addressed as distinct from those who claim to write about policy itself.