Martin Luther King, Imaginary Conservative
Yesterday Lucian Winthrop, an Alt-Right douchebag who not only has the name of a prep school bad guy in a Wes Anderson movie but the personality and looks of one as well, took to Twitter to mansplain and whitesplain the ideology and core beliefs of Martin Luther King to King’s own daughter Bernice. To borrow a phrase the young people no longer use, if they ever did, this was mansplaining on fleek.
When Bernice King, the late Civil Rights leader’s daughter, responded to “comedian” Josh Terry’s—who, it should be noted, got paid handsomely to eat food on television, which is, sadly, the kind of thankless labor white men are forced to accept due to their relentless oppression—controversial/insane/incredibly offensive and wrong assertion that “Straight white male” was the new N-word with the eloquent argument, “My father was working to eradicate the Triple Evils of Racism (prejudice + power = oppression/destruction of a race deemed inferior), Poverty (Materialism) & Militarism. Pointing out the group that most commonly benefits from all 3 is not “labeling.” Truth before reconciliation.” Winthrop knew he had to stop sipping his craft cocktail and school the progeny of our greatest Civil Rights leader on what her dad and his movement were all about.
“Hmmm... I don’t think you actually listened to your father. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” the raging douchebag tweeted. He followed it up with “I’m pretty sure he never said, “I have a dream we will make continuous references to people’s sexuality and whether they’re white or not... oh, and capitalism is bad too..”
Umm, I'm pretty sure Martin Luther King never said "I have a dream that my words will appear alongside naked titties"
Incidentally, “capitalism is bad” is an oversimplification of King’s beliefs but it’s not exactly inaccurate.
As obnoxious, insufferable re-interpretations of Martin Luther King’s ideas and legacies go, it’s right up there with when Rob Schneider, who Tweeted to legendary Civil Rights activist John Lewis, who actually fucking marched alongside MLK, “ “Rep. Lewis. You are a great person. But Dr. King didn’t give into his anger or his hurt. That is how he accomplished and won Civil Rights.”
It’s easy to see why the right wants to claim Martin Luther King as their own. There aren't many saints in our society. There’s pretty much only Martin Luther King and Mr. Rogers. That’s it.
So Conservatives cherry-pick King’s speeches and aggressively misinterpret his words to support their conception of King as someone who would be on their side if he were alive today. Yes, King dreamed of a day when men were judged not by the color of their skin but rather by the content of their character, and believed that all men were created equal.
That most assuredly does not mean that once racist Jim Crow laws were off the books King thought racism would disappear in a poof and we would achieve instant equality. No, King understood, possibly better than the Lucian Winthrops of the world, the pervasive, insidious and fundamentally institutional nature of racism, and its connection to capitalism and the dominant power structure.
Martin Luther King may have worn a suit. He may have been a good Christian gentleman. He may have talked about non-violence but make no mistake: like Emma Lazarus, King was a radical, a warrior for peace, a man who understood that the righteous struggle for true equality would never be over, and needed to be fought fiercely on all fronts all the time.
It seems safe to assume that if Lucian Winthrop were alive in 1963, he’d be writing about how Martin Luther King was a Communist and a traitor and a race-baiter the way much of the Conservative press did back in the day.
Time and a martyr’s dramatic death have made Martin Luther King safe. They’ve also muddied his message and words to the point where belligerent morons like Winthrop and Schneider, one of whom is a boorish, pathetic clown with no dignity who is laughed at derisively by people for whom he is a walking punchline, and the other of whom starred in The Animal, can “Well, actually” Martin Luther King’s own daughter and John Lewis about what MLK actually meant.
If he were alive today, Martin Luther King would have found the allegorical elements of Bright very heavy-handed and confused.
We’re increasingly losing touch with King as a human being. He’s becoming like Colonel Sanders or Walt Disney or Jesus Christ, a brand more than a man. It seems inevitable that he will live on as an aspirational and inspirational figure whose ideas are simplified, tidied up and sanitized for mass consumption. But if it’s inevitable that King will live on primarily as a symbol, he should at least symbolize the right things, the things he actually fought for in his lifetime, and not as the weird reactionary Conservatives like Winthrop desperately need him to be.
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