Every year we celebrate Martin Luther King in the same way we used to celebrate Washington and Lincoln on those February Mondays before MLK Day — which is to say: not at all, really. Oh sure, your kids might have had an assembly last week, and you’ll have to arrange child care today as well as go without mail. And if you’re in a certain kind of industry, you’ve got to day off and you’re probably doing something fun — but whatever that fun thing is, it probably has nothing to do with Dr. King.
Ironically, the one place in our culture that can reliably be counted on to focus on MLK-the-man on MLK Day is conservative talk radio — and they, too, are a kind-of-testament to how far MLK has come in our culture. Prior to ten years ago when I turned talk radio on, all I heard was endless rants about how awful the man was: He was a communist. He was a socialist. He was unfaithful to his wife, and therefor underserving of our admiration. He took the spotlight away from the black in our history who really deserved our attention — even if the only name of a worthy historical black man radio hosts could ever come up with 20 years ago seemed to be George Washington Carver. (FTR, that expanded a bit in 2009. For some reason after Obama took to the White House, every conservative radio host suddenly knew who Booker T. Washington was.) Now, however, conservative talk show hosts don’t just forgive MLK his supposed flaws — over the past six years or so they’ve posthumously adopted him as one of their own, pitching the idea that it was always liberals and progressives that had it in for the civil rights leader.
And if you’re a total ass, of course, you use the holiday to tell everybody how exactly like MLK you really are.
But I put it to you that Martin Luther King deserves more of our mental bandwidth than this, especially today. And so if you’re looking to honor the man, here are some items you can find online that you should go and re-read — or read for the first time if you haven’t had the opportunity yet. And because of what Dr. King stood, worked and died for, I’m going to forgo the obvious request to reread his I Have a Dream Speech or Letters From a Birmingham Jail. Indeed, I’m not going to steer you toward Dr. King’s writings at all.
Instead, I am going to charge you with reading — and grappling with — the issues that I believe Dr. King would most like us to be dealing with today in his name. To that end, I ask that you celebrate MLK day by re-reading one or all of the following:
The Case for Reparations: Penned by the wonderful Ta-Nehisi Coates, this essay/piece of journalism/call to action was a game changer for me. And while I grant that it may not be for you, it will give you pause regardless of your stance on the subject of reparations. Warning: You should probably leave all of your preconceptions about reparations, the worth of talking about them at the door. I say this to conservatives and liberals alike.
Racial Disparities in Incarceration Increase Acceptance of Punitive Policies: Published this summer, this study from Stanford drew conclusions that are deeply disturbing:
A white female researcher asked 62 white voters to watch a video containing mug shots of male inmates. Some of the participants saw a video in which 25 percent of the mug shots were of black men, while others saw a video in which the percentage of black men among the mug shots rose to 45 percent.
The participants then had an opportunity to sign a real petition aimed at easing the severity of California’s three-strikes law. “It seemed like a great opportunity – a real-life political issue – to test this question of whether blacker prison populations lead people to accept these more punitive policies,” Eberhardt said.
The results were clear. Over half of the participants who’d seen the mug shots with fewer black men signed the petition, whereas only 27 percent of people who viewed the mug shots containing a higher percentage of black inmates agreed to sign. This was the case regardless of how harsh participants thought the law was…
Many legal advocates and social activists seem to assume that bombarding the public with images, statistics and other evidence of racial disparities will motivate people to join the cause and fight inequality. But we found that, ironically, exposure to extreme racial disparities may make the public less, and not more, responsive to attempts to lessen the severity of policies that help maintain those disparities.
The full study is hidden unless you are a subscriber to Psychological Science, but I firmly believe that the openly readable results themselves are enough to chew on — and that they make us so uncomfortable that we probably won’t. I’ve noted this sturdy in three prior posts, and each time the conversation in the threads has conspicuously avoided even the most tangential mention of it. This study deserved more thought and conversation as a nation than we have given it.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness: OK, OK, I admit it. You can’t technically read this one online, since it’s a book. (You can, however, find a decent description and excerpt here.) Still, it’s important enough that you should find a way to read it anyway. Published in 2010, Michelle Alexander’s book on how we’ve switched from disenfranchising African Americans in our communities to largely eliminating them altogether is startling. If I had a guess as to what single issue Dr. King would be focusing on today were he alive, it would hands down be Alexander’s findings.
So go forth and read. And think. And grow.
And since I don’t think I’ve said it yet: Happy MLK Day, everyone.
“But we found that, ironically, exposure to extreme racial disparities may make the public less, and not more, responsive to attempts to lessen the severity of policies that help maintain those disparities.”
This does not seem ironic. Leaving aside conscious, active, explicit racial animus, when you see a group of people who “look like you” and are asked, “How mean should we be to these people?” it would seem reasonable to expect that they are going to have a different answer than when asked that question about a group of people that does not “look like you”.
Mind you, none of this is to say that racial bias — implicit or explicit; conscious or unconscious; active or inactive; inherent or learned — isn’t a real issue. It’s just that we should stop being surprised at where/when/how it manifests. And should take this into account when actually attempting to address the various issues.Report
Amen Kazzy. If you find such results surprising, it means that your model of human nature is wrong and needs revising.Report
Yeah, conservatives don’t say MLK is a communist anymore. Now they say he’s like Hitler.Report
Oh man, the comments. Why did you do that to me?Report
Dude, it was a link to the Daily Caller. What did you expect? The reasoned nuance of the comments section at breitbart.com?Report
I didn’t realize that until it was too late.
In my defense, I only vaguely know what The Daily Caller is.Report
Oh my lord, Chris — why did YOU do that to ME? I had already read the column Mike linked to, but that made me go look at the comments section. My god.
I wonder, does Tucker Carlson even read the comments from his own followers on his own site and wonder, “Oh sweet Jesus, what have I done?” I’m not a big fan of Carlson by any means, but he isn’t… that.Report
You both fell victim to one of the classic blunders – The most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia” – but only slightly less well-known is this: “never read the comments to a Daily Caller post”.Report
Believe me when I say it was a lesson I will never forget.
Although, I have to think that the comments sections on posts that are about people who are not black are by definition better than that one was.Report
If conservative blog comment sections existed when I was in college, I’d possibly be a liberal Democrat. Or off in Chrisland.Report
We’d welcome you.Report
I only go to Chrisland if I can afford to spring for the E ticket rides.Report
There are discount fares if you bring your own Marcuse.Report
Mike
When did LBJ become a conservative or even a republican? Its sad that you cant get it right.Report
That’s why I support Community Colleges: so anyone at all has the opportunity to go back to school and learn to read.Report
Mike
I hope there is a good community college near you. The article is pretty clear.Report
From a Former OTer:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/01/robert_e_lee_day_some_southern_states_still_celebrate_the_confederate_general.htmlReport
Today is also Confederate Heroes Day in Texas, the only state to fight two wars to preserve the institution of slavery.Report
Congratulations, Texas. You’ve out-absurded Springfield!Report
In Arkansas, it’s the combined MLK and Robert E. Lee holidays. (Lee’s birthday is the 19th, which I suspect is also the reason for the Texas holiday.)Report
Well, that is just awkward.Report
‘Tis.
I believe the holiday predates MLK Day, but Texas could have at least changed the date since it falls around MLK day every year. But Texas is Texas.Report
Our man Jamelle points out:
I don’t feel any such compulsion. Lee was a deeply intelligent and thoughtful man, one who with neither false humility nor narcissism about his own abilities understood what his participation on one side or the other could mean.
He deliberated about what was at stake, and why it was being staked. And the result of that deliberation was that he committed treason in defense of slavery.
I can find no honor in that. What noble, honorable thing did Lee do to deserve him a better verdict from history than those awarded to Aaron Burr or Benedict Arnold?Report
Get it right Burt. Lee couldn’t raise his sword against Virginia, his home state. At that time folks saw themselves more as state citizens than as citizens of the US.Report
That would explain why 40% of West Point grads from Virginia fought for the Union.
And of treason in defense of slavery isn’t enough to keep us from celebrating his birthday, maybe the fact that he was a slave owner, and a cruel one (though I repeat myself) should be?Report
Then he could have sat it out.
But it’s not right to say that because he was a Virginian, Lee couldn’t take up arms against Virginia. Other southerners did not erect such a barrier to honorable service of the United States.
Winfield Scott was a Virginian and he was the architect of the grand plan to destroy the Confederacy and who wanted Lee to be the field commander because he was himself physically unable to fill that role himself.
George Thomas, a Virginian, is thought by some to have been the most able commander in the Union Army. (Not sure I agree but now we’re both beyond my ken and in the realm of opinion.)
David Farragut, a Tennessean, led the Union Navy against the Confederacy without hesitation or quarter after his state seceded. His heroism at the battle of Mobile Bay is celebrated in the Navy to this day.
Lee wasn’t bound to fight for Virginia. He chose to do what he did.Report
Notme,
You do realize that there were Germans who fought to overthrown the Nazis in WWII?
People can fight against their own countries, and there is honor in it when their country is in the wrong.Report
Even if we accept Lee being a patriot (and there is an argument along the lines NotMe says), he was a patriot fighting against the nation to which Virginia currently belongs. We shouldn’t celebrate patriots who fought on the wrong side. (And that’s even leaving out the cause his state was fighting for at the time was fighting for, which is no small thing.)Report
Will,
Let’s compare Lee to the Founders. They fought a war because they couldn’t get representation in the legislature that governed them. Lee fought a war despite his state being over-represented (due to the 3/5 clause) in the legislature that governed them.Report
“Lee wasn’t bound to fight for Virginia. He chose to do what he did.”
There is really something rich in arguing that Lee was COMPELLED to fight in favor of slavery.Report
David Farragut, a Tennessean, led the Union Navy against the Confederacy without hesitation or quarter after his state seceded.
To be fair, the Tennessee navy didn’t have much going for it.Report
Lee was a traitor who deserves to remembered as such. If Virginians are looking for someone from that era to venerate, they could do a lot worse (IMHO) than John Brown.Report
@zac
Or they can honor Mr. or Mrs. Loving.Report
@saul-degraw We already have a holiday for that, it’s in the middle of next month. 😉Report
@burt-likko
When you think about it, it would be like if Germany spend lots of time idolising Rommel. It’s not that he was a bad guy really, but still it would be in bad taste.Report
There are monuments to Nathan Bedford Forrest all over the South. Given his role as founder of the KKK, that’s not so different from German monuments to Rommel’s boss.Report
@mike-schilling Every time I’m reminded of that, it disturbs me all over again. I think it says a lot about the culture of the South that it venerates guys like Lee and Forrest, and none of it is good.Report
Honestly, I think Benedict Arnold deserves more sympathy than we give him. Certainly more than we give Lee; Arnold couldn’t turn around without getting metaphorically kicked by the Continental Army.Report
There are monuments to Nathan Bedford Forrest all over the South
Not just in the South. You’ve got Nathan’s hot dogs in the Northeast, a Bedford, Indiana, in the Midwest, and there are National Forrests all over the west.Report
zac,
Give it another 50 years or so, then the money will run out.
All it bloody well says about the south is that the only thing the Cavaliers knew how to do right was propaganda.
Folks: With respect to Lee — he was first in his class at West Point. He had family in Virginia, didn’t he? Having no choice isn’t exactly the best way to phrase “chose his family over his country” if that was indeed what he did (I got no proof either way, but I can see his decision being a bit more forced, and less patriotic).Report
I gotta dissent from your non-inclusion of Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Everyone knows the speeches, but relatively few have actually read that missive either in part of its entirety. It does as much to deflate the warm and fuzzy parts of the King myth as anything else, and is the definitive how-to manual on – if it’s possible – fixing a broken political system without (over) watering the tree of liberty.Report
Oh, this was not a request not to read King; I think he was a fantastic writer. (I always thought his talent was unappreciated in the same way McCartney’s always was — always being held up and compared to a cooler and more colorful counterpart he’s inexorably linked to.)
I just think a lot of times when King gets brought up, it’s done in a “and then we fixed all of that” vibe, and I wanted to go a different direction.Report
Who is the “cooler and more colorful counterpart”? Kennedy? Malcolm X?Report
I was thinking X. I almost always see the two of them held up and some kind of black civil rights dying and yang, even though I never felt that was a very complete picture. (And I also kind of always assumed doing the Martin v. Malcolm was a white thing — but I don’t actually know if that’s true or not.)Report
That was my sense, too… the ying/yang thing… though I don’t know all that much about it, either the sanitized history book version or the true version. I know King beyond the ‘teddy bear’ image he is often reduced to in part because a former teacher of mine worked directly with him (she was with him the night his house was attacked) and have had the good fortune to hear her speak on numerous occasions. But I don’t know much about X. I just wasn’t sure to whom you were referring. My assumption was X but I know that the Kennedy brothers are often linked to King and both were also know for their oratory/writing skills (well, if you believe they actually wrote what their name is attached to).Report
I read *about* X in high school, and what I learned back then was basically a pretty cardboard, pro-violence guy who acted as a counterpoint to what we were learning about King. The message was simple and obvious: King was great because he wasn’t X, and X was not great because he wasn’t King.
I was in my 20s when I finally read X’s autobiography, and it was a revelation. I don’t know if they teach kids today about X like they did when I was a kid (or if they teach about him at all), but I hope they do better. What I loved about his auto-bio was learning who he never was just this one thing. He was constantly evolving; every experience he had he seemed to learn from and grow from. If we are going to have a holiday to celebrate a civil rights era from that time, King is the absolute right choice. But if I could sit for an hour or two, break bread and just talk to anyone from that era, I think I’d choose X.
This might no t make sense, but as a young white dude me King to me was kind of like the Jesus I saw most Christians talk about on TV: Amazing and wonderful, but so perfect as to be kind of one dimensional in a way that not being Christian (or black) I could never quite relate to, except symbolically. Reading X for me was like reading The Last Temptation of Christ — it added such a layer of real humanity in its strengths and weaknesses that it felt almost spiritual, and helped me grow in a way reading the one-dimensional stories never could.Report
I should probably read that.
Last year, when I had Mrs. Lacey (my teacher whom I still call by that name despite being 30-years-old and a teacher myself because, goddamnit, she’s Mrs. Frickin’ Lacey!) visit my school last year, I had her meet directly with the 8th graders for a Q&A. They study the CRM so what better opportunity than to sit with someone who was on the front lines? Anyway, one of them asked something about what she thought King’s best quality was. I’m sure they were expecting an answer regarding leadership or speaking skills. Her response? “His sense of humor.” She then shared stories about some of the jokes he’d tell. It was amazing to see. To have him fleshed out as a human… not just the amazing leader and world-changed her was… but as a man, a husband, a father, a friend, a guy with a great sense of humor. I hope it resonated with them. I was fortunate to have heard similar stories from her (though my school as a student severely underutilized her since she was “just” a science teacher by trade) and I hope they resonate with the newer crop that I have the great privilege to introduce to her and the world she connects us to.Report
Perhaps unfortunately, King basically ignored X’s repeated invitations to get together and possibly work together.Report
SO you’re saying X was Garfunkel?Report
Ask Mrs. Lacey to do a guest post telling some of those stories. I am dead serious about this.Report
@mike-schilling
Unlikely, if only because she is well into her 70s and I can barely get her to reply to an email.
I do have video of her presentation (school-wide, not Q&A with 8th grade) from last year and will try to get as much video of it this year. If anyone smarter than me wants to edit through that and put something together, I’ll get the appropriate permissions.Report
That would be great. (Unfortunately, when it comes to editing and processing video, I’m not smarter than anyone.)Report
A letter from X to King, from 1963:
Report
Also, those who think of Dr. King as some sort of moderate, rather than a revolutionary, should compare much of what he called for with Newton’s Ten-Point Program. They diverge, but not by as much as some would probably like to think.Report
This might no t make sense, but as a young white dude me King to me was kind of like the Jesus I saw most Christians talk about on TV: Amazing and wonderful, but so perfect as to be kind of one dimensional in a way that not being Christian (or black) I could never quite relate to, except symbolically.
Tod – Have you seen Selma yet? I very highly recommend it. One of the movie’s strengths is how effectively it shows King as a real person, with doubts and fears and practical political tactics, rather than the perfect one-dimensional figure.Report
@katherinemw I haven’t, so thanks for the recommendation. Sadly, it might be a few weeks before I’ll be able to get to it, but I will put it on my “to do” list.Report
In response to the challenge in the OP, I read the public summary of the Stanford study. Our Tod didn’t even quote the more disturbing result:
In other words, when presented with evidence that a policy by which people were a) searched by the police without probable cause and b) selected for search in a racially disproportionate manner, and the result that c) it resulted in adding half again to the proportion of blacks sent to jail, the number of people who said “I have a problem with that” dropped from 33% to 12%.
That’s fishing scary.Report
@burt-likko
Again… when you live in a county that beats you over the head with the message that brown folks are inherently criminal and come from a species that has some biologically-ingrained tendencies towards tribalism, most American humans see that data and don’t think, “That’s a travesty of injustice!” They think, “Seems like that program is working,” and/or “Doesn’t effect me.” And almost all of that is happening on a subconscious level. That is why institutionalized and systemic racial bias is so pernicious.Report
Tod
Kudos for finding a way to bash republicans in a MLK tribute. Why should I read TNC’s call for reparations when King never called for them?Report
What republicans did I bash?Report
Basically the entire second paragraph.Report
Man, you guys really need to get your story straight.
Post by Me: Republicans need to stop listening to these talk radio hosts.
You Guys: Why do you equate the GOP with a talk show host? We have never even heard of this Fox News you mention! They have nothing to do with us!
Post by Me: Here’s something a talk radio show host said — what a dunderhead.
You Guys: You hate Republicans! Those hosts represent us! A criticism of them is a criticism of all of us!Report
Things like this are why I like having Notme around. She’s a good visceral reminder of how mouth-breathingly stupid the average conservative is, without having to deep-dive into hellpits like the Daily Caller or breitbart.com.Report
@zac Dude! I haven’t seen you around in a while. How are your insides? All healed and better?Report
Yeah, I’m all healed up — the surgeon did an excellent job and left a very minimal scar. Funnily, it actually aligns with a nearly-identical scar I’ve had since infancy in a way that forms an “equals” sign, so now I can do math equations on my belly.
And also I don’t know if you saw, but in the comments on your Black Mirror S1E1 review, Glyph graciously asked me to do a guest post on an episode of Black Mirror, which I’m pretty excited about because it’s always been a fantasy of mine to one day write a guest post here (my fantasies are weird). I intend to do it on White Christmas, the special that just came out last month, because there are a couple of notions in play there that I think would make for a fascinating discussion.Report
I don’t see that Tod is bashing Republicans, or perhaps more accurately, conservatives.
At most, Tod implies that contemporary conservative respect for Dr. King is insincere and their concern for black history is shallow. For conservatives partisans, this seems like a perfect setup to playing the BSDI card.
You should read TNC’s article because the “reparations” discussed therein aren’t necessarily what you think they are. He might surprise you. He did me.Report
Yeah, and I don’t even think that about most Republicans or conservatives. I just think that about talk show hosts.
I never thought they were very representative about their flocks’ take join MLK back when they used to bash him. I kind of assumed it was one of those things where the holiday was something they had coded as “liberal” and so bashing him was just what they did as a matter of course.
Outside of some people in my parents’ generation and older, I have never met anyone — anyone — who was conservative that didn’t speak in the highest regards for King. I think this is largely why talk show hosts eventually stopped, and decided to go the only other way they could think of to bash liberals about MLK — create a claim that he was anti-progressive and would have been campaigning for Ted Cruz if he were alive today.Report
I read it the first time there was a post about it here which wasnt even that ling ago.Report
Instead, I am going to charge you with reading — and grappling with — the issues that I believe Dr. King would most like us to be dealing with today in his name.
Without saying anything bad about the excellent list, I want to question the practice of trying to infer what a man who has been dead for 47 years might support today. I think the temptation is too great to simply substitute one’s own beliefs since they are clearly great, and surely a great man would support great ideas, right?Report
I’m not sure I agree. I mean, it’s possible you’re on to something here, but since I’m not saying King would or wouldn’t endorse any these items, well… I feel like I’m on pretty solid ground here.
Suggesting that King would be interested in (and a part of the discussion on) controversial issues that concern black americans were he alive today doesn’t really seem the same to me as saying if Lincoln were alive right now he would totally be in favor the Affordable Care Act.Report
I hesitate to bring up The Boondocks but… well, there was an excellent episode of The Boondocks that discussed an alternate history where MLK Jr. was not killed but merely put into a coma by James Earl Ray… and what happened when MLK Jr. woke up (right before 9/11).
There is a lot of hot air expelled by white people over the whole “why don’t black people criticize black people?” thing and that displays a hell of a lot of easily fixable (if not willful) ignorance. Perhaps many of those folks think “why don’t they criticize black people the way that I do?” Anyway, the episode shots as indiscriminately as Dick Cheney and everybody catches some birdshot to the face… but, back to the point, if we’re thinking about “WWMLKJD?”, that episode needs to be discussed as well.
As for why I hesitated… well, it feels like getting a personal and intimate insight into another culture’s conversation with itself. There are criticisms you can give yourself among members of the in-group and criticisms you can give yourself when surrounded by the out-group and the two sets of criticisms may not overlap at all. This episode feels like eavesdropping.
That said, if you can get past that, you’ll find yourself depressed as hell after you laugh for a while.Report