- Mar 11, 2015
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Neither Content Nor Character: Resisting the Right-Wing Hijacking of MLK
Tim Wise
One thing can be said for conservatives: they are nothing if not consistent when it comes to the things they say about race in America.
This truism was driven home yet again recently when I found myself in a debate over affirmative action with such a person, who insisted that folks like me, by virtue of our support for the concept, had abandoned the vision of Martin Luther King Jr.
King, I was assured for what seemed like the 11,729th time would have opposed affirmative action — what my detractor called “racial preferences” — because he believed that people should be judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
Faced with yet another fool claiming to be the philosophical soul mate of a man his conservative forebears literally despised when he was alive, I weighed my options.
First, I thought of mentioning that King had endorsed the concept of affirmative action as early as 1961, upon returning from India where similar efforts had been instituted for the Dalit caste.
Or perhaps that he did so again in his 1963 book, Why We Can’t Wait — which apparently no conservatives have ever read — in which he noted:
“Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up.”
Then I considered pulling up the video on my phone, which shows King shortly before he was murdered discussing the importance of actual financial compensation — reparations one might say — for black folks long denied opportunity even as the government facilitated the building up of white wealth.
Neither Content Nor Character: Resisting the Right-Wing Hijacking of MLK
Tim Wise
One thing can be said for conservatives: they are nothing if not consistent when it comes to the things they say about race in America.
This truism was driven home yet again recently when I found myself in a debate over affirmative action with such a person, who insisted that folks like me, by virtue of our support for the concept, had abandoned the vision of Martin Luther King Jr.
King, I was assured for what seemed like the 11,729th time would have opposed affirmative action — what my detractor called “racial preferences” — because he believed that people should be judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
Faced with yet another fool claiming to be the philosophical soul mate of a man his conservative forebears literally despised when he was alive, I weighed my options.
First, I thought of mentioning that King had endorsed the concept of affirmative action as early as 1961, upon returning from India where similar efforts had been instituted for the Dalit caste.
Or perhaps that he did so again in his 1963 book, Why We Can’t Wait — which apparently no conservatives have ever read — in which he noted:
“Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up.”
Then I considered pulling up the video on my phone, which shows King shortly before he was murdered discussing the importance of actual financial compensation — reparations one might say — for black folks long denied opportunity even as the government facilitated the building up of white wealth.
Neither Content Nor Character: Resisting the Right-Wing Hijacking of MLK
