"The same as Jesus, King is often celebrated incompletely. Princeton professor Eddie Glaude, speaking Sunday at the WNYC MLK Day event at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, referred to those who might “empty his radical witness.” Even as contemporary historians and artists such as Michael Eric Dyson and Ava DuVernay have offered fuller pictures of King the human being in recent years, our nation’s Eurocentric historical narratives continue to do their work to a man who was, in his time, one of the foremost threats to structural racism and inequality. Our rituals, while comforting and inspiring, lulled the American public into a lionization of a complicated man whose advocacy for economic justice and labor—and against war—are not always part of the story. As long as King’s radicalism stays missing from our remembrances, it will be easier for people to lay claim to his story—even people who oppose everything King actually stood for...
“Our actions are taking place in a weekend when there will be a number of service projects over the country, politicians telling stories about what they did during the civil rights movement, and people telling a sanitized version of what Dr. King did and leveraging [his] story for their own interests,” said BYP100 national director Charlene Carruthers. She added that King’s legacy could be taken up by generations of people who are truly invested in the long-term fight for black liberation. Revering him isn’t bad, she told me, when we revere the whole picture...
this blurring of history, particularly in schools, should also be our focus, given that it has opened the possibility for King to be viewed as some Christ-like savior for black America. Such framing implies that we need a sole leader to guide us, and it helps actual enemies of his goals say that they, too, were with King all the way. It allows those enemies to then insist that unless a black civil rights activist behaves like the King that they’ve conjured in their selective memories, then that activist isn’t truly pro-civil rights."
Yes. It's like that moment during the Baltimore Uprising when hella randos were quoting MLK on peaceful protests, like MLK was on the side of white people who don't want to deal with the anger and dehumanization of ongoing systemic inequality.
I really don't know what MLK Day is... for. We've sort of squarely placed the whole 50s/60s civil rights movement on his shoulders, and so we "celebrate" it by "celebrating" him. By, I guess, not going to work/school. There's movement towards making it a day of community service, which is sort of part of his legacy but that still feels kinda decorative.
I think what we need, as a nation, is a day to reflect on ideals of equality and realities of inequality. I think it's fully appropriate to do this on MLK's birthday, and to name this day of reflection after MLK. I really wish that this is what today was; it feels more like a day when I am even more likely to have an awkward interaction with a really smiley, older white person who just wants to let me know how happy they are that I am sharing space with them (and don't want to reflect on why there still aren't very many black people in the space).
Maybe I will start to act out this intention next year. Maybe I will organize some friends to meet up and really read one of MLK's speeches and really think about what has changed and what needs to change still.
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