Yesterday was Martin Luther King day in the states.
So why did they kill him if he already won civil rights for Black people? Because he was gonna work on taking care of White people next…and that would have lead to a society where EVERYONE prospers. He was about to fuck America up in a big way. For it’s own good.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love money and I love being able to buy what I want, when I want and I love seeing people prosper. I just don’t believe in people suffering so I can prosper. And neither did Dr. King.
He saw segregation as the “easy” part. The next part would be more difficult. Calling to task that which wasn’t so morally clear. The rampant inequities of our capitalist society.
As noted on Son Of Baldwin
"King was a strident critic of capitalism and materialistic society, and urged Americans to ‘move toward a democratic socialism.’ Referring to the now iconic Greensboro Lunch Counter sit-ins, he asked, ‘What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?’ King also explicitly linked the problem of capitalism with the problem of racism. ‘When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered,’ he argued in a speech at Riverside Church in 1967. The reverend was very aware that this kind of challenge was even more dangerous than his work on segregation and civil rights. ‘You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums,’ he warned his staff in 1966. ‘You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.”
You see, if you understood the history of race and racism, you would know that racism was invented to control White People. Shocking? Don’t be. I’ve been called a Nigger by a homeless White guy begging for change as I was walking home in my tailored suit from my job in the finance district.
Quite fascinating that a drunken, piss soaked, filth encrusted beggar felt like he could get under my skin by calling me that word…and you know what? He did. But it reminded me of this quote by Lyndon B. Johnson:
"If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice that you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Dr King addressed the phenomenon of White identity in a sermon called “The Drum Major Instinct”.
“King spoke of how he talked to his white jailers in Birmingham, and how their pride and psychic investment in their whiteness was a self-destructive measure, not least because they were “living on…the satisfaction of [their] skin being white,” when in reality they were as bad off as many blacks. Speaking of them, King said he informed them that “[you think] you are somebody big because you are white,” but in fact “you can’t send your children to school.” - Michael Erick Dyson, I May Not Get There With You
You see, there was a time in slave rebellions when poor White people…the indentured servants would rise up WITH the slaves…all that was put to a stop basically by telling them…why are you fighting us for? “You’re White…at least you’re not a Nigger” and tossing them a few “crumbs”.
RACE as we define it, doesn’t exist. It’s a social construct…and really just color coded class warfare.
What does exist is that some people suck and some people lie and some people want to believe those lies because it’s easier than the truth.
The truth is, we live in a fundamentally unfair society, where the 85 richest people in the world have accumulated more wealth than half the planet.
We live in a society where income inequality has never been higher, while corporate profits have never been higher…and worker wages have never been lower.
Before Dr. King was assassinated by the US government, he spoke of a campaign that would force Washington to address the societal inequities that lead to poverty. Improve life for everyone and force America to look at it’s real ugliness. This would be the hard part. Challenging the myth of “The American Dream”, the myth of “Whiteness” and the myth of “The Dream Fulfilled”…and they killed him for it.
And now we are left with a world where “racism, militarism and materialism” rule.
Where a 17 yr old child walking home from getting candy and soda is shot in the heart by a man with numerous arrests for violence and that child’s name is dragged through the mud and the man who shot him is lauded as a hero and a victim.
Anyways…here we are.
We are left with a world, where world leaders start wars based on lies and result in the deaths hundreds of thousands of innocent people andthousands of poor men’s sons. Where the President of the United States gets on national TV and tells people to help defeat the terrorists by buying stuff…while they make laws that destroy the “freedom” the terrorists were (supposedly) attacking.
We live in a world where there are more Black people in prison in America, than there were Black people held as slaves.
We live in a world where a 10 sec rant by a pissed off (winning) football player is making more news headlines than a bloody 8 man, purposeful hockey brawl that literally started the second the puck hit the ice.
We are left with a world where people are famous for being famous and we reward them by buying more stuff with their names and likeness on it…I dunno, so maybe we can be famous too?
In short, we live in a world that Dr. King would be ashamed of. As far as I’m concerned they should just call it January 20th…because the world we’ve built is certainly not worthy of that man’s name or his dead dream.