XPost: alt.america, alt.journalism, alt.politics.obama   
   XPost: dc.politics   
   From: rkoch@banmlkday.com   
      
   I remember when Martin Luther King Day was first declared a   
   Federal holiday, how Arizona’s Governor Meecham repealed the   
   previous governor’s establishment of the holiday there, and how   
   Jesse Helms led opposition to it in Congress, on the grounds   
   that King was unpatriotic, a Communist sympathizer, and not   
   “important” enough to be honored with a holiday.   
      
   We all knew what they really meant, just as I knew what the   
   childhood friend who dismissed it as “a black holiday” was   
   calling black people in the privacy of his own mind. It was the   
   1980s, and it was pretty clear that what people who had trouble   
   with celebrating Martin Luther King Day really had trouble with   
   was racial justice.   
      
   Which is why it may seem odd that now, in the year 2016, I’m   
   having some trouble with Martin Luther King Day myself.   
      
   One of the more painful things I’ve observed, since I began   
   speaking out against racism, is the degree to which white people   
   have taken a sanitized, safe, domesticated version of Martin   
   Luther King into our hearts.  I wish I had never seen this, but   
   I’ve actually seen it more times than I care to count: a black   
   person speaks out against present-day racism and violence, and a   
   white person attempts to shame him into silence by invoking   
   Martin Luther King and what the white person is pleased to call   
   “non-violence.”   
      
   What about riots?  The white person asks.   
      
   You’re so angry! The white person accuses.   
      
   I can’t support Black Lives Matter, the white person complains.   
   It doesn’t have the moral leadership of Martin Luther King.   
   Or–my (least) favorite: What would Martin Luther King think of   
   what You People are doing?  (To which the rational answer–which   
   I have seen made–can only be, “We’ll never know; You People   
   killed him.”)   
      
   And the definition of non-violence gets extended, almost   
   infinitely, to mean no disrupting political rallies, no blocking   
   traffic, no making unpleasant scenes at the mall.  “Non-   
   violence” has become code for white people refusing to listen to   
   live black voices, in the name of a distorted version of a man   
   whose actual words we rarely bother to hear, beyond a sound-bite   
   or two from the “I have a Dream” speech.   
      
   Are we “honoring” Dr. King?  Or are pretending that his death   
   marked the end of racism in America?  What are we really   
   celebrating here–his non-violence, or our hope to continue our   
   lives without being inconvenienced by protests, shamed by   
   justifiable anger, or disturbing life inside our comfortable   
   white bubbles?   
      
   Nonviolence–real non-violence–can be assertive and disruptive as   
   hell, something I notice a large number of us white folks don’t   
   want to acknowledge.   
      
   Likewise, it seems as though it’s inconvenient for those of us   
   living in comfortable privilege to see that marginalization is   
   violence… poverty is violence… indifference to oppression is   
   violence. In fact, there’s a whole range of ways it is possible   
   to be violent in our passivity.  I hate to see us dumbing down   
   what nonviolence really means, bowdlerizing the legacy of Dr.   
   King, in the service of our immediate emotional comfort.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)