From the day he was born until the day he was murdered, 39 years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. was outside the mainstream.
Born to a comfortably middle class family, the color of his skin made him a second class American. He refused to accept the status quo of racism and became the famous face of the original Black Lives Movement.
With his visage on United States postage stamps and a federal holiday commemorating his birth, King’s radical messages have been whitewashed by the white majority. They’ve created a civil rights icon they can feel comfortable with and project onto any issues they choose.
Politicians and radical-right “Christians” attempt to venerate King with platitudes, but they vilify his life with policies that victimize the groups of people he championed.
King demanded equality for black people. And brown people, and poor people.
True equality means white people are forced to give up one right — the core, long-held, fundamental right to be racist.
White people in the U.S. benefit from a broken, racist system. They can recognize it, and help to dismantle the system that benefits them at the detriment of others, or they can deny their privilege, and be racists.
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps,” King said.
If you oppose the BLM movement today, then you would have opposed the BLM movement King led then.
For inspirational quotes from King, visit:
Jim Meisner, Jr. is the author of the novel Faith, Hope, and Baseball, available on Amazon, or follow this link to order an autographed copy. He created the Facebook page Faith on the Fringe.
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