In honor of Martin Luther King Jr...
By watered down I mean that society has twisted MLK Jr's legacy to be about white people and watered the man down to be a peace loving polite guy like how history has watered down Jesus. In reality both men were fierce as fuck.
16th January 2012
Words honestly cannot describe how I abhor what has been done to MLK Jr.’s legacy
Lebanesepoppyseed:
MLK Jr. didn’t ask for rights, he wasn’t pandering or sweet to the forces that oppressed him. He was a threat to whiteness through and through.
MLK Jr. wasn’t violent not because he wanted to gain some brownie points from whitedom but because he KNEW, FIRSTHAND, what violence does to a people, both those who are abusing and those who are being abused.
MLK Jr. didn’t dress in his Sunday best and speak clearly with diction so as to pander or kiss up to white folk. He did it for himself and for his people, to show what form his black identity took. That we in this society read speaking fearlessly and intelligently with passion and power in the face of oppression as “white” is beyond me, because that’s a black attribute through and through.
MLK Jr. didn’t have a problem with individual white people, but with their racism and ignorance on a whole, with their white supremacist society, and with their complacency and willingness to see it perpetuated at the detriment of him and his people. He knew that those who were quiet, who made excuses, who willfully stayed staunch in their ignorance and hatred were just as much a part of the problem as those who were more blatant and aggressive in their hatred. Any compassion coming from him was borne from himself, NOT from anything white people did, not something they at all merited or deserved.
The general way his legacy is portrayed, this whole “Peace & Non-violence” shit is all a ruse to make it about white people. “He was so nice to us, he was polite and peaceful, that is why we chose to give black people rights!”
My fuckin’ ass.
If MLK jr. was so accommodating and nice to whiteness, then why was he was arrested so much and assassinated, huh?
Huh?
What’s more, white people didn’t give shit. Black people fought for those rights and ripped them from their aggressors’ hands.
That’s how it’s always been. The oppressor is never going to willingly give up power or own up to wrongs and abuse. To destroy oppressive systems you have to be a threat to the way they run, to the privileges and the benefits the people who run it and who get privileged by it gain. Things will get uncomfortable and shitty and you’ll be falsely accused of being violent/aggressive/bitter/stuck in the past/oppressive/over-emotional/uppity, and sometimes, you risk everything for it, but that’s just them trying to silence you, to kill your collective voice by making an example of some of you, to separate you from your justified and righteous rage, the only thing that gives you power and that lends you the voice necessary to hold them accountable.
More importantly than what he was to white people and white supremacy is what he was to black people and people of color. We waste so much fuckin’ time analyzing shit from a white perspective we don’t even talk about how important what he did was for African Americans and other people of color.
That’s the shittiest thing to do to him, to ourselves. Let’s take some time to rethink how we talk about these things.
This was my reply:
As a woman of color, this always bothered me. Thanks so much for speaking out.
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.