A late MLK Day post

So right-winger Roger L. Simon heroically takes it on himself to explain how “Black Lives Matter” is totally opposed to the ideals Martin Luther King fought for—the heroism part being that as a white guy daring to interprent King’s legacy, he’ll undoubtedly be criticized, and then oppressed! At the link, LGM’s Shakezula dissects his bullshit and the general “Dr. King would never support that” arguments against black protests then (even as the speakers insist they totally supported protests back in the day).

Roy Edroso of Alicublog has a long tradition of tracking conservative bullshit about King. For example, LBJ Urged King to Be More Like Hitler! MLK Day was only created because of racist intimidation against whites (and white people only joined the movement because King bribed them with sex and drugs!)! King was so conservative, today he’d be guilty of hate speech!

And Rick Perlstein points out that back in the day, many right-wingers despised King and said so commenting on his death:

•Strom Thurmond: ” “[W]e are now witnessing the whirlwind sowed years ago when some preachers and teachers began telling people that each man could be his own judge in his own case.”

•Ronald Reagan: “[a]great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they’d break.”

As Perlstein puts it, “The conservative argument, consistent and ubiquitous, was that King, claiming the mantle of moral transcendence, was actually the vector for moral relativism” by claiming that men could choose which laws to break.

And I’ll close with a quote from the man himself: “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.”