CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
Profile continued . . .

ARCHIVES!
My Outrage The Day Before Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Sunday, January 20, 2008

this entry brought to you by andrew bird, "opposite day"


When I got home today, my five-year-old daughter came up to me and said "Guess whose birthday's tomorrow!" I asked her who, legitimately having forgotten, to which Celest replied, "It's Martin's birthday!"

I instantly knew which Martin she was talking about, and although I'd forgotten tomorrow was in fact the day, I hadn't forgotten that it was coming up, because just two days ago we were talking about it at work. I thought it was adorable that she only remembered his first name and referred to him as simply "Martin", but also thought it was excellent that they taught her about him in school. See, Celest isn't in Kindergarten yet, she's in a program called Kindersteps, and she's only in class about 2 hours and 30 minutes a day. She's only five, so I didn't expect that they would tell her about him, but they did, and that made me happy. Celest said that it was only a cartoon that she saw-- and yes, she said "only", as if knowing that he was way more important than she was being taught, and that a cartoon couldn't possibly contain everything-- but I told her that it was fine, because she is five, and there's no way that she could understand the whole story as of yet, and that there was plenty of time to learn. That they mentioned him at all made me very happy. I don't think I learned anything about Martin Luther King until at least the 3rd grade, and even then it was just a video with a clip of his famous speech with triumphant, patriotic music and probably a voice over, and the whole thing lasted perhaps 5 minutes.

Celest had said she'd only seen a cartoon and wanted to see a real picture of him, so I got on the Internet and did an image search, got briefly choked up, and Celest asked me why he was important. I said that he was a great man who inspired millions of people. She asked me what he looks like now. I told her he had died. She asked me how he died. I said she'd learn that eventually, but for now "he died" was all she needed.

When I clicked "back" on the Internet browser, there was a link that said "The Truth about Martin Luther King Jr," and I instantly thought, I'm not going to click on that with my daughter sitting here on my lap. It might be a thoughtful biography on both sides of Martin Luther King Jr, the icon that we all know, as well as the real man who was flawed, or it might be racist propaganda. So I talked to Celest about Dr. King for a few more minutes and then she went off and watched cartoons. I joked with Michelle about the site I'd seen, that it might be legit but I was afraid it was racist propaganda. I did another search on King it came back up, and the link was to martinlutherking.org. Something about it seemed fishy though, and my curiosity got the best of me.

A moment later, I was-- I honestly can't remember specifically when I was more offended. It might have been about six months ago when I saw that documentary about that cop who goes undercover to bust parents that have sex with their own children.

I think what most offends me about this site is that they managed to get "martinlutherking.org" as their domain-- the .org sounds like something legitimate, because virtually everything that ends with .org is an organization, and generally not-for-profit. This, however, is racist propaganda. What further incenses me is the following: I would question your purpose, but I wouldn't be offended if you had a site that legitimately wanted to show Dr. King's fault, as a way of humanizing a man who has turned into a faultless icon. Maybe I'd think that you were trying to drag a great man down, and maybe I'd assume your reasoning for it was racist. But you could still make legitimate arguments that Martin Luther King Jr. The Man wasn't as great as we've made him out to be.

You could make those arguments legitimately, if your website did not also quote David Duke. Or have racist symbols and icons. Or link to a forum with banners that say "White Pride World Wide". Or that also disparaged the Jews. Or a link that debunks myths on black people creating various inventions throughout the ages. Or quoted especially offensive rap lyrics and indicated that they were representative of blacks as a hole. Basically, if these morons had the restraint to keep their racist propaganda free of the even more blatant racist propaganda, maybe they'd have a point that, while ugly, unfortunate, and uncomfortable, perhaps would be more difficult to argue. But they are racists. They are coming from a place of hate, and as such, they can't keep their hate out of what might have been a more legitimate argument, which, as a consequence, utterly and completely destroys the intent of their whole argument.

I am not uncomfortable with someone arguing that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't as perfect a man as we've made him out to be, just as I wouldn't be uncomfortable with someone trying to show a foul side of Abraham Lincoln. I believe that the greatness of their achievements will always shine through any attempt to deconstruct them, because they did in fact achieve great things. But one thing that is especially true of Dr. King-- unlike perhaps older historic figures, it takes no revisionist history to make King's image shine bright. You only need to see the footage of King giving speeches in front of millions of ecstatic, inspired people, to know that the things we attribute to him-- inspiring millions of people to bring about change-- are completely and utterly untampered with by history. It doesn't matter if he was a womanizer or a Commie, or whatever other reasons he might have gone to jail. He really was an icon, even in life, he really was considered a figurehead for an extremely important and history-changing movement, he really did inspire millions and millions of people. And by taking the lowest of low means of trying to get a message of hatred to innocent people, by making a website seem somehow legitimate, brings a new definition of "sleazy" and "ill-reputed". I would say that these assholes should be ashamed, but clearly they have no shame.
-----



with love from CRS @ 9:21 AM 

0 Comments:

Post a Comment