The minute Martin Luther King, Jr., went from talking about equal rights for Black people to calling for the end of war and a shift from giving the military a blank check to a fair and equitable distribution of wealth in the U.S. and around the globe, he was a dead man walking. Those with the Power-To-Define in the White Supremacist system didn't feel threatened by King talking about Black folks suffering or White folks having privilege. That was just considered "whining." White Supremacy says Black peoples' suffering is acceptable, if it's noticed at all, and White folks have earned their privilege.
But when he started pointing at the basic foundation of White Supremacy, the mother lode of capitalist profit that gushes from the wounds of millions of exploited workers -- Black and White -- into the hands and bank accounts of the few at the very top, it was time for a lynching. And lynching it was.
When U.S. citizens close their businesses, hold their ceremonies, and schedule their inaugurations to celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., I keep waiting for them to finally hear him. He may have started out by begging White people to be nice. But he finished up by demanding economic justice for all -- even those that do not yet know they don't have it.
Note: Thanks to BuzzFeed for the idea for this post and some of the images above.
Welcome back. Excellent post, by the way. I wrote one asking people what their opinions are if MLK existed today.
ReplyDeleteVery nice post on MLK. The extreme of what you are getting at when you ask if anyone actually listened to what King said is summed up by Glenn Beck Championing MLK. The right wing have tried to gain and hold up MLK as one of thereown and as sharing similar beliefs. Which is absurd as wall street championing Lenin.
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