A lifetime of Coopting Has Sucked the Wind Out Of MLK Day.
A quick note on why MLK day as we know it can miss me.
As a child, my father sat me down and, much to my chagrin, had me listen to a Malcolm X speech that he had going on the record player. I was immediately transfixed. I don’t remember what the speech was about, but I remember the fire in Malcolm’s voice. It was the first time I ever heard a Black person be that passionate talking about Black people.
It was the opposite of how Martin Luther King was introduced to me.
It’s sad to admit, but Martin Luther King day never really meant much to me. Three-day weekend? Awesome. Black folks will never turn down a three day weekend. Do you think we ever gave a fuck about Columbus?
But today as a point of pride or reflection? Not so much. Except I’m writing this so maybe?
I went to private school for most of elementary. Out of five-hundred students, I was one of about ten Black children. Like many kids, King’s introduction came via school as part of a perfunctory Black History Month lesson plan. It was the period at the end of the Black history sentence. Slavery, Tubman, Carver, Parks, King, equality. Ok, equality was the end of that sentence, but you get my point.
MLK was presented as a man who preached for the unity of all; in that way, he didn’t feel like he belonged to Black people in particular. As an adult, I understand that this is far from the case, but those lessons were the first drops of water that would wear down the rock that is MLK’s legacy and holiday.
As I grew up, I would see the same wearing down from corporations using King’s image as a part of their marketing strategies. I remember seeing MLK’s face on McDonald’s placemats with an excerpt from “I have a dream” written on them.
Looking back, it’s interesting that I learned as much about MLK from that placemat as I had in private school.
To be clear. MLK’s actually legacy, his role in the civil rights movement, his genius, his bravery are all undeniable. But the Martin we are introduced to from childhood on is a distilled, palatable, eleator pitch. It’s one that makes white people comfortable. It’s one that makes Black children dig through dry caked up dirt to find the fertile soil of King’s life.
Martin Luther King was a radical. He was not a beloved figure in his life time. James Earl Ray wasn’t an American exception. He was the manifesation of America’s psyche. There were as many people cheering over MLK’s death as there were those weeping.
“The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.”
— The Three Evils of Society, 1967
The image of MLK we see today is America’s distorted reconciling with the evil inside it. Because of this MLK day, for me, feels like it was invented to relieve white guilt by raising a martyr of their own making. An amazing contortion which allows them to be both perpetrator and victim.
This morning I was scrolling through my Facebook memories and found a picture that crytalized this for me even more now than when it was first posted. The picture was from a 2016 ad for the UFC celebrating Martin Luther King day.
Among the plethora of ironies that exist in a MLK based UFC advertisement possibly the largest among the is how conservative the UFC’s leadership and many of it’s athletes are having fully endorsed Trump’s second bid for president.
This to me is proof that what America celebrates on this day isn’t the life of an iconic revolutionary but a homogenized ideal, free of atonement, that just happens to use King as it’s glowing black face.
“I contend that the cry of “Black Power” is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.”
— Interview with Mike Wallace, 1966
When Muhammad Ali died I wrote of the moment he lit the Olympic torch at the 1996 games in Atlanta.
“As America celebrates the life of Muhammad Ali, she will point to iconic moments like his lighting of the Olympic torch at the 1996 games in Atlanta, which was a beautiful spectacle. What America won’t say is that spectacle was, in reality, an apology to a man, who after winning the Olympic gold medal lamented the treatment of himself and other black Americans due to institutionalized racism and segregation. It was atonement for doing something that is perpetually American, killing the messenger. America tried to do symbolically to Ali, what it did to the likes of Martin and Malcolm. In similar fashion, she left it to future generations to make amends.”
I think Ali and King are similar in that in their peak vocality they were not loved, and much less liked by America™. It was only after they were silenced, one by affliction, the other by bullet, that they began to be viewed as darling figures. Ali was fortunate in that, despite his affliction he lived long enough to have some say in his legacy. King’s assassination at the all too young age of thrity-nine left the arc of his legacy to be crafted by others.
King never got the apology Ali got. Instead America used King to craft forgiveness for an apology it never actually gave.
The majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity.”
— Where Do We Go From Here, 1967
Happy Martin Luther King day. I’m going to go take a nap.
