Posted on 01/24/2003 2:16:17 PM PST by mrustow
Toogood Reports [Weekender, January 26, 2003; 12:01 a.m. EST]
URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/
As neoconservatives have constantly reminded us in the affirmative action debate, Martin Luther King Jr. argued for people to be judged based on the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin. Hence, they say, 'Martin would have opposed affirmative action; you do the same.'
Enter journalist Leonard Greene. Writing on January 20, when Martin Luther King Day was celebrated this year, in "Listen to His Whole Message," Greene argued that King actually supported affirmative action. Now, I knew that King supported affirmative action by the time of his death – a fact that neoconservatives conveniently gloss over – but had thought that he'd changed his mind sometime between his August 28, 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial and his April 4, 1968 assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Greene cites King's book, Why We Can't Wait, also published in 1963, in which King already supported affirmative action.
"America 'must not only radically readjust its attitude toward the Negro in the compelling present, but must incorporate in its planning some compensatory consideration for the handicaps he has inherited from the past,' King wrote in the book Why We Can't Wait.
[King wrote] "It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years."
Greene claims that conservatives who quote the most famous passage from King's 1963 speech, "I Have a Dream" – "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" – do so by taking it out of context, and insinuates that they have never read the speech in its entirety. Greene calls the passage "perhaps the most misappropriated excerpt of a generation."
Now, that's a curious charge to make against white conservatives, who may be the only group in America, outside of a handful of historians, who have read all of King's speech.
My experience during six-and-a-half years of teaching college during the 1990s, during which I frequently taught King's speech, was that my black students had never read it. King's rich language might as well have been Greek to them.
Ignorance of King's speech owes much to the greed of his heirs, who sue everyone who reprints or replays the speech, even TV networks such as CBS who filmed it and are thus exercising their own property rights, to shake them down for rights payments. Such extortion is particularly odd, given that in copyrighting the speech, King violated the copyright of the Rev. Archibald Carey. The climactic "Let freedom ring ... " passages were all stolen from a speech that Carey, then a famous black preacher, delivered before the 1952 Republican Convention.
(The phrase "I have a dream," now inextricably linked to King, was then a common phrase, and was most famously associated with the lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who used it in the form "I had a dream," in the Tony Award-winning, 1959 Broadway musical, Gypsy, and the eponymous, 1962 movie, both of which were based on the autobiography of one of America's biggest celebrities, retired stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.)
And yet, we shouldn't be too hard on King's heirs, since as Ted Pappas shows in his exhaustively documented work, Plagiarism and the Culture War: The Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Other Prominent Americans, they were simply following King's own example. Not only were most of King's major works and speeches plagiaries committed by a man who compulsively coveted other men's words – and women – but during his life, King vigorously defended their copyright, especially that of "I Have a Dream." However, the mainstream media are too timid to bring up such unpopular facts in a court proceeding against the Kings. (About the only works published in King's name that weren't plagiaries were those that were ghostwritten for him by Andrew Young, Stanley Levison, and other associates.)
Every year, on MLK day, TV stations broadcast excerpts of King delivering the speech, the speech has frequently been aired on the PBS documentary, Eyes on the Prize, and American public school children have for years been taught that Martin King – as he is known to those who study his life – was the greatest American who ever lived. Indeed, King is the only American who still has a federal holiday in his name: Washington and Lincoln's birthdays have been subsumed into "Presidents' Day," their memories officially no more significant than those of James Buchanan, Warren Harding, or Gerald Ford.
For most black Americans, Martin Luther King is the embodiment of the notion of black rights, in other words, the idea that one SHOULD be judged by the color of his skin, not the content of his character. White neoconservatives have always sought to use King as a bridge to racial reconciliation, even as they suggest that blacks really don't know what he was talking about. Conversely, Leonard Greene explicitly says that neoconservatives have no idea what King was talking about, while suggesting that blacks understand him just fine.
I think blacks understand King via the following exercise in equivocation: Saying 'A person should be judged by the content of his character,' while thinking, 'but his character derives largely from the color of his skin.' Thus, the phrase "the content of their character" is merely an exercise in deception.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Greene's article is where it appeared – the New York Post. The Post belongs to the owner of neoconservatism, billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who owns News Corporation, which includes the Post, the weekly standard, the Fox Network, Fox News, and many other expensive media properties (some of which have hired me as a freelancer over the years). Surprising, because it is the neoconservatives who, more than any other group, white or black, have embraced the Martin-cult. I would have expected to find such an essay in the New York Times, before I would in the Post. The surprise evaporates, when one sees that Leonard Greene is a Post staffer.
It is fashionable among neoconservatives to praise the civil rights movement (i.e., of the 1950s and early 1960s), and to distinguish between it and today's race hustlers. And many civil rights activists did indeed show great physical courage, none more than Martin King. And some of the things those activists fought for were honorable, in particular, the right to vote, which for approximately 75 years – prior to the 1965 Voting Rights Act – was violently crushed in the South. And yet, as Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom point out in America in Black and White : One Nation, Indivisible, when it came to the issues that for almost forty years have been known under the rubric of "affirmative action," most civil rights leaders came down squarely in support of racial quotas, right from the get-go.
The difference between Martin and the other civil rights leaders, was that they never feigned support of colorblindness; he did. Indeed, if we take seriously King's proffered vision, it would lead to the disappearance of the black race through intermarriage.
"I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers."
King knew darned well, that if you let little black and white boys and girls "join hands" today, you'll have little mulatto babies tomorrow. King didn't want that; he'd have had a heart attack, if any of his children had ever dated whites. (That is, had he lived long enough to see any of children date anybody.)
Leonard Greene calls on people to take "I Have a Dream" seriously in its entirety, but I don't think he really wants us to scrutinize the speech. He just wants us to accept his interpretation of the speech's meaning.
Consider the following passage:
"One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."
Now, the above passage is nonsense on stilts. As Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, Thomas Sowell, and other leading social scientists have pointed out, the period of 1940-1960 saw the greatest explosion in black prosperity in American history. By contrast, since the advent of affirmative action in the mid-1960s, black wealth has stagnated.
It is not the fault of neoconservatives for seeing King as having supported colorblindness in "his" famous speech. Like most politicians, King was duplicitous. He used language to conjure up an image of different colors – which is what the colorblind ideal is, as opposed to the monochromatic images that were at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement – because he wanted white folks to believe that he represented a color-blind ideal. But he didn't.
The myth of Martin as quota-fighter is dear to white neoconservatives, because they desperately seek to invoke historical common ground between blacks and whites. Unfortunately, the common ground isn't there.
If you want to find a great black public figure who would have opposed affirmative action, consider Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), the former slave who was as great an American as any who ever lived. But Booker T., a racial accommodationist, is today unfashionable; many blacks are offended by references to him. Martin is safer. But one can embrace Martin in the fight against affirmative action, only at the expense of the truth.
Not that all blacks support affirmative action; conservatives like to cite opinion polls in which even the majority of blacks oppose it. I don't know where those black respondents live, but they sure aren't from New York ... or Washington, D.C. (nicknamed "Chocolate City" by locals) ... or Chicago... or Baltimore ... or Atlanta ... or Miami or just about any other major city I can think of.
Some prominent blacks do cry out, like lonely voices in the wilderness, against the apartheid of affirmative action. America's greatest living social scientist, Thomas Sowell, and one of her greatest columnists, Walter Williams, both support the merit principle, but they enjoy little popular support among contemporary blacks. Ward Connerly, one of the most heroic Americans alive, opposes affirmative action, but Connerly has been demonized by black leaders, academics, and media celebrities, and George W. Bush treats him like a pariah, to avoid becoming associated with him.
The brilliant writer and radio talk show host, Larry Elder, opposes affirmative action, but as Jay Leno observed when he once had Elder on The Tonight Show for about a minute-and-a-half to flog his bestselling book, The Ten Things You Can't Say in America, "Nobody'll have this guy on."
The bridge between whites and blacks on affirmative action – and just about everything else – is washed out. So, why not forget about using Martin for political expedience, which won't work anyway, forget about trying to build bridges to people who despise you and don't want to be bound to you, and just stick to morality and the truth?
Affirmative action is a moral outrage. There is no justification for admitting an unqualified student to a college or graduate school, or hiring an unqualified person, or letting a contract to an unqualified person, based on the color of his skin, any more than there is a justification for rejecting a qualified person based on the color of his skin. And when you hire or contract with incompetents, people die.
People who practice affirmative action are frauds and racists. Frauds, because they have advertised and purported to be acting based on the merits, but have actually engaged in deception. And they are racists, because affirmative action is merely a euphemism for racial discrimination.
Affirmative action is racist, and it has terrible consequences. It's that simple, and if Martin Luther King didn't understand that, so much the worse for him. Affirmative action isn't a dream, it's a nightmare.
To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Nicholas at adddda@earthlink.net .
Actually, a pretty damning case has been made over the past 35 years, that black educators are at fault for black educational failure. A white fellow recently published a long report at Front Page Mag on his attempt to help by teaching for Teach for America, in the public schools of his hometown, Washington, D.C. At one point, a black teacher aide from another class barged into his class, and announced in front of the guy's black students, "I'll kick your white ass!" (Nothing happened to the aide.)
See also the section "Explaining Black Academic Failure," in:
I'm sorry,but I hope you realize the trouble I have getting over my natural shyness. I'll try to be more direct in the future.
This was an absolutely sensational liberal-mugged-by-reality article, but in the article there are good black teachers, despicable whites, as well as visa versa. This link is easier to use than that provided by mrustow:
How I Joined Teach for America — and Got Sued for $20 Million
Yes, I agree with that. Affirmative action discriminates against the majority. Favoring someone's race over another's accomplishments is not only wrong but it also hurts everyone involved. So much for Martin Luther King's comments about people should be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
You mean this isn't why neoconservatives worship him...?
Define "PC."
Having been first entering the job market and thence involved in a small construction business that was hiring a new crew for each job it built in the late sixties, as a kid I learned the ins and outs of the political climate that fostered the Affirmative Action programs for the EEO office at the time.
It was seen by those that introduced it from the executive branch to be a way to temporarily change the hiring climate. Many businesses had an "internal", institutionalized, wall against hiring black for any postition, women for job "x", or jews for job "y". That was known and thought to be a very tiresome thing that, dispite the civil rights act, would take a very long time to wither away.
It wasn't so much opposed by conservatives at the time, but more by the southern voting block that was stinging from the battles it had recently lost in the Civil Rights legislation of the late fifties and the Civil Rights Act of '64. But the temporary vision of the EO when it was introduced in '65 and then expanded by Johnson in '67 and then further instituionalized by Nixon, was still a vision of a temporary leveling of the playing field due to conditions that had sloped it in the other direction.
Political decisions are often compromise, artificial constructs and products of temporary coalitions and prudent measures to meet a problem of the day. Unmet, such problems fester, as indeed the institutionalized job segregation did.
Our nation, like any, regards as legitiment, those acts of government most closely adhering in their creation to the processes laid down in its constitution and its history. This is why the non-judicial action, of an activist court, making law rather than interperting it, in Roe v. Wade has had little acceptance. Likewise, Executive fiat in making law is often felt non-legitiment. But this Executive Order 11246 which dealt with government contractors and those wishing to sell to the government that all citizens pay for in their taxes, was felt to be the temporary measure to (1) forstall quotas elsewhere, which many knew was the truely divisive issue, and (2) to be a true measure of the Executive Branch laying in place a program to implement the civil rights acts measures in the one arena that the Feds could rightly control, their own purchasing.
But people remember what was promised. It was promised that this was a temporary measure, and it was promised that it wouldn't become a quota. When programs go through elaborate constructs to thwart the Baake case such as the case that brought this current fever about, people know that a wrong turn has been taken.
Think of it. A point system for evaluating graduate program students that awards 150 points on race alone, while awarding 100 points for a PERFECT SAT SCORE.
If such programs haven't now become unequal application of law and public funds, what else can they be termed?
No, this temporary measure, understood in its time, is due for retirement. Lets see where we are now. Many friends of mine who are minority owners of contracting business, despise the government niches such programs carve out. They wish to be plain business owners preforming a simple trade, no more, no less.
This is exactly the case. At first, MLK just wanted to have people get their fair shake, without the government mandated racist policies which were clearly wrong at the time. Only later did he get co-opted by the leftist crowd. I prefer to remember the former MLK myself. Hey, no one is perfect.
Define "PC."
"PC" as in m-i-s-t-a-k-e. I had meant to say affirmative action.
You mean this isn't why neoconservatives worship him...?
I guess not. I don't think tney'll be addressing Greene's article any time soon.
The political and economic emancipation of Black America becomes more tarnished every year?
Thanks for the history lesson. I wasn't aware that MLK was "the Great Emancipator." (Economic emancipation, too? Wow -- MLK was even greater than what the public schools teach!)
Neos have been in the front lines fighting AA for the last 20 years. Actually, a paleoconservative once admitted as much to me. He just thought neos were doing it because AA keeps so many Jews out of the universities.
As a white former Army EEO officer, I can tell all here that Affirmative Action plans as originally devised were not code words for quotas. The socialists in the Democratic party have equated AA with quotas. Nothing could be further from the original intent of AAPs. I support AA, but not quotas; and those who do not understand the difference have no business criticizing MLK's support of AA.
As a white former Army EEO officer, I can tell all here that Affirmative Action plans as originally devised were not code words for quotas. The socialists in the Democratic party have equated AA with quotas. Nothing could be further from the original intent of AAPs. I support AA, but not quotas; and those who do not understand the difference have no business criticizing MLK's support of AA.
I've read a library's worth of books and articles on AA, and I'm not familiar with these non-quota AA programs. Oh, I see, you said "as originally devised." So, you're talking about theoretical, utopian AA, as opposed to real, existing AA. But I suppose that in your book, I have "no business criticizing MLK's support of AA."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.