Transmissions

So I was reading The Washington Post earlier today and learned that there is a great controversy underway.

Apparently the planned memorial of King looks too “confrontational.” King confrontational? Gasp! No!

The first thing that had to go was his furrowed brow. We can’t have a pissed off black man appear to be thinking now can we. The truth is that all of these “tributes” to MLK by the political class have nothing to do with loving him or his work. The truth is they hate his guts and always have. Every “tribute” they offer usually is nothing more than an extension of his first murder. We are told that King “Had a dream” but are supposed to forget that that dream was in fierce competition with the American nightmare. The nightmare persists. We are supposed to forget why they hate him; it’s that he didn’t dance right. When other “responsible Negro leaders” were adjusting to their new found middle class status he radicalized. Forget that he came out against the Vietnam genocide, that he called the US (rightly) the greatest purveyor of violence in the world or that he said things like “A riot is the language of the unheard.” We are told to vaguely talk about this “dream” or maybe now we can safely discuss “change” or “hope we can believe in.” It’s the same way they murder Rosa Parks over and over again. You know, the “meek” and “polite” seamstress who just happened to be really tired that day on the bus. Never mind that she was a committed activist who took a shockingly courageous stand that helped shift the paradigm of that time. King can’t be confrontational now. We’ve moved beyond the “excesses” of that time. MLK should be a friendly brand that can be fit into a CNN love fest or on a Starbucks coffee mug. We aren’t to remember that in his last days he was making the connections between race, class and Capitalism or the implications of his planned Poor People’s Campaign right before he was murdered the first time. They want us to let him die once and for all. Let’s not.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 8:11 pm and is filed under Quickies, People's History, Radical Black History, Class Struggle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.