Nowadays, people who likely know little about Martin Luther King Jr. like to use his words out of context to derail or ignore conversations about racism. I have picked apart his tactic and also used other excerpts from the “I Have a Dream Speech” to show how this tactic ignores the rest of MLK’s speech. As I was scrolling through Twitter I also came across these words from MLK, which many of the “colour-blind” crowd don’t know about or like to ignore.
Realize that when MLK is discussing white moderates who prefer the status quo to change, he is referring to people living in the time of Jim Crow. Despite the (more prominent) police brutality and segregation inflicted on people, many whites still believed black people’s protests were the wrong way to go about things. As Tim Wise discussed, even the people who thought of themselves as enlightened figured that black people are too divisive with their actions.
Although black people are now equal in the US on paper, the white moderate poses an even greater threat; the last bulwark against true equality. The white moderate has only become more sympathetic to the right. The same right that won’t bake a cake for a gay couple due to “religious freedom” and blames “both sides” for the violent actions of white supremacists.
The status quo is more important than ever to the moderate. Why rock the boat calling out white supremacy in the White House? We’re just being divisive if we bring that up. Sure, it’s fine for a business not to bake a cake for a gay couple, but it’s cruel to refuse service to Sarah Huckabee (Trump’s mouthpiece). These moral judgments are steeped in hypocrisy and ultimately serve to strengthen the straight, white male status quo.
When people start comparing Huckabee’s incident to the experiences of black protesters at sit-ins, we have reached a new low as a society. Then again, this shouldn’t be too surprising. The naive belief that true equality is already present in society, whether it is racial or sexual, had led to resentment of the attempts minorities make to empower themselves. Any show of pride (no pun intended) is viewed as an attack on the straight, white male. A black superhero film is interpreted as overhyped or just racist since people are blind to the slate of white superheroes they get year after year. Then someone taking part in the Unite the Right Rally thinks their racial pride is the same racial pride black people demonstrate when they get excited about Black Panther. Making bigoted policies and then facing consequences for them becomes left-wing cruelty. Freedom of speech, which comes from the liberals that the moderates and the right love to criticize so much, becomes an absolute that is supposed to protect people from any form of criticism, consequence or disagreement: As opposed to just protecting people from jail time for different opinions.
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