How to actually remember Martin Luther King Jr.

What textbooks didn't teach you and how it's warped today's fight against racism

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How to Actually Remember Martin Luther King Jr. What textbooks didn't teach you and how it's warped today's fight against racism NEWS US POLITICS 17 JAN 2016, 10:53 GMT COMMENTS (0) REPORT Eliza Racine UNITED STATES Eliza Racine is a student at the University of California: Santa Cruz, majoring in li... Every third Monday of January, Americans remember the life and activism of Martin Luther King Jr., one of the most prominent figures of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s. But do people actually remember King properly, or do they just stick with whatever they were told about him in high school? With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the past year and a half, some responses to the protests (or as called in some extreme cases, riots) have been “reminders” on how peaceful King was and how black people should remember to follow his footsteps, complete with commentary like this below (from The Modern American Revolution on Facebook). This plays into the idea of respectability politics where if a marginalized group works in peace to appease their audience, then surely their demands will be listened to. And it’s nothing more than absolutely naïve thinking. Even though King’s specialty was nonviolent civil disobedience, it did nothing to prevent his assassination in April 1968. To add insult to injury, he was a target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO, an operation which illegally sought to dismantle political organizations and leaders, starting off with Communists and eventually targeting others which included civil rights, women’s rights, anti-Vietnam War, etc. Not only did the FBI illegally put King under surveillance, but they thought he would eventually abandon his peaceful ideologies and become violent like black nationalists (who actually were not as violent as history classes teach us). And to make matters worse, there is a big conspiracy that the government actually planned his assassination. A wrongful death suit, King Family vs. Loyd Jowers, was filed in 1999, and the defense had nothing to counter these conspiracy claims, therefore the King family won the case. And especially given how much of the COINTELPRO documents (which all can be found on the FBI’s website) are blacked out, I have no problem believing the United States government planned King’s assassination. So the idea that being peaceful will automatically fix major social issues means nothing when history has already disproven that. Speaking of history, King never condemned riots. Not once in all his activism. “A riot is the language of the unheard,” he said in March 1968, just weeks before his assassination. There’s a reason why there are multiple civil rights and black nationalist organizations; they all had different ideas and solutions for racism. Not everyone was going to agree on the same thing. And with how much history parallels itself, you can see this today in Black Lives Matter as well. But unless you are part of these marginalized groups and these are issues that affect you, you have no place to say how they should organize and protest. King was well aware not everyone would agree with his peaceful ways. While he was against using violent tactics, he also didn't think it was appropriate to punish those who did. He understood many black people were rightfully angry after going through centuries worth of slavery, mass murder, cultural assimilation, segregation, and just being treated less than human for their blackness. This release of pent-up rage is inevitable and a way for people to speak out and hope their pained voices are finally heard. So instead of punishing people for being reasonably angry or telling them how to express their demands (AKA tone policing), we need to listen to why they are angry and validate it. If we can’t get to the source of the problem, then there’s no solution. And to top off the biggest irony of all with the respectability politics and tone policing, King actually hated this kind of behavior and would be ashamed if he saw how many people did this in his name. In his Letter to Birmingham Jail, he describes the greatest struggle for black people in America during the Civil Rights movement: “the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice… who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.’” He even thought someone like this was worse than a racist politician or the Ku Klux Klan. “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” Remember what I said about history paralleling itself? Same thing applies here. Whether over Facebook or on live national television, we’re still seeing these “white moderates” who think they know everything about these issues but are horribly misinformed. Some may have good intentions but naively and inappropriately demand peace and sometimes speak over Black Lives Matter protesters, the ones who are actually affected by anti-black racism. So misquoting King in the name of misguided peace is purely insulting to everything he stood for and proves many people don’t actually know everything about him or even everything about the Civil Rights movement beyond his "I Have a Dream" speech. There are many first steps needed if we ever hope to come close to some sort of “post-racial” society. One of them is taking a deep look into history’s hidden secrets, finding what won’t show up in your typical high school textbook, and thinking critically on how it’s impacted the present day. Hopefully then we can dismantle the never-ending cycle of racism and teach all sides of history, no matter how horrifically ugly it may be, so we will really be well-informed.