Blow Blows It … By About 45 Years

In “50 Years LaterNew York Times black opinionator Charles Blow blows it by about 45 years, writing that he wonders “whether the day [Martin Luther King Jr.] imagined” in his “I Have A Dream Speech” during the March on Washington “will ever come and whether many Americans have quietly abandoned King’s dream as a vision that can’t — or shouldn’t — exist in reality.”

Blow needn’t have wondered. All he need do is consider that by the late 1960s King’s former followers had all but universally abandoned his dream of a nation where his children and all God’s children “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” and instead demanded preferential treatment based on their race.

UPDATE

A commenter below predictably responds: “We’ve been over this before. MLK was an affirmative action proponent. You are being dishonest by selectively quoting his rhetoric to make it look like he wasn’t.”

He’s right about one thing: we have been over this before. The charge of dishonesty — a staple of preferentialists driven to intellectual apoplexy by anyone who still takes King’s dream seriously and has the temerity to quote it — is not worthy of response, but since the “if King were alive today” rejoinder is so ubiquitous I will discuss it, again (and no doubt again again some time in the future).

In Original Intent And Original Meaning [And Martin Luther King] I discussed the distinction between “original intent” and “original meaning” and applied that distinction to the debate over King:

In a recent post discussing some of the fallout from Martin Luther King’s birthday, I asked “What Do We Honor When We Honor Doctor King? (And Who Are ‘We?’)” There had been many protests of President Bush laying a wreath on King’s grave, nearly all of them criticizing him for betraying King by his opposition to racial preferences. Indeed, nothing seems to send preferentialists around the bend and over the top faster than critics of preferences quoting King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, as we always do.

And they always respond with one version or another of “if King were alive today” he would be a strong advocate of racial preferences. I have some reservations about this assertion, but on balance I suspect it is true. After all, all King’s followers, the NAACP (which had advocated a strong version of colorblindness in court for decade after decade), and virtually the entire Democratic party did an about face on colorblindness starting in the late 1960s, and there is no compelling reason to suppose that King himself would have stood against this trend.

Taking a page from the original meaning book, however, we can see that the proper response to the posthumous King’s probable position is, So what? King’s specific intent does not determine the meaning of the principle he evoked, either for his contemporaries or for subsequent generations…. Of course in this case the text in question is not so dense and opaque, like “due process” or even “equal protection.” What part of wanting people to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin is so difficult to understand?

Now, King’s speech is not a part of the Constitution (at least not of its text), but it has achieved a well-deserved iconic stature. It gave voice to an understanding of equality that traces it roots back at least to some of the abolitionists, that achieved partial but limited success in the Reconstruction Amendments, and that, finally, was embedded in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the year following King’s delivery on the Mall.

Thus … I believe those of us who continue to resent benefits or burdens being based on skin color are honoring the meaning of Martin Luther King’s ideals much more fully than preferentialists who argue that if he were alive today he would agree with them.

Writing, as I am, about fifteen minutes from Monticello, it seems all too obvious to me that there are some ideals that are not discredited simply because their authors fail to live up to them.

“In quoting King,” I wrote two years later in Hijacking A Civil Rights Hero, “we honor the principle he stood for, whether or not he would have continued to stand by that principle in the future that he was denied.”

We honor King far more, in fact, than those pro-preference apparatchiks who call us “dishonest” for quoting him and can enlist him in their ranks only by forcing his ghost to recant the most eloquent articulation of the American principle of equality — that we should all be treated without regard to race, creed, or color — since the Declaration of Independence.

ANOTHER UPDATE

Thanks to Powerline for linking to this post earlier today. Also on Powerline today, Paul Mirengoff’s From Dream To Nightmare In Fifty Years should not be missed. It lists four demands of today’s “civil rights” movement that were purposefully and glaringly absent from King’s famous speech.

Say What? (9)

  1. B.B. August 24, 2013 at 11:14 pm | | Reply

    Blow needn’t have wondered. All he need do is consider that by the late 1960s King’s former followers had all but universally abandoned his dream of a nation where his children and all God’s children “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” and instead demanded preferential treatment based on their race.

    We’ve been over this before. MLK was an affirmative action proponent. You are being dishonest by selectively quoting his rhetoric to make it look like he wasn’t.

  2. Cobra August 25, 2013 at 10:29 am | | Reply

    John,

    And the great thing about your blog, is that you were challenged and CORRECTED on that 2006 blog entry by not one, but THREE of us.

    http://www.discriminations.us/2006/10/hijacking-a-civil-rights-hero/#comment-33529

    –Cobra

  3. Robin August 25, 2013 at 1:30 pm | | Reply

    With the White House Office of Public Affairs commencing in 2012 what it is calling the American Commonwealth Partnership with Harry Boyte and Harry Boyte grounding the vision in Bayard Rustin’s 1965 essay, I think we are about to see a push to say that Rustin’s vision was his boss’s as well.

    As you know Rustin is the aide who planned the 1963 March. Until I read “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement” I had intuited a desire to overthrow capitalism but not that someone in a position of influence like that would lay it out so graphically. Or that it would come on my radar in 2013 as a vision that still needed fulfilling.

    Whatever MLK’s intentions (and I say that as someone who grew up in ATL), it is Rustin’s vision that fits where this Administration is taking this country. That’s one reason I believe it will become the MLK vision by assertion whatever his personal preferences may have been in 63 or 65 or 68.

  4. B.B. August 25, 2013 at 6:46 pm | | Reply

    And they always respond with one version or another of “if King were alive today” he would be a strong advocate of racial preferences.

    What nonsense. This isn’t some bullshit hypothetical about what “if King were alive today”. This is a matter of King’s openly stated views King made known when he was alive.

    Thus … I believe those of us who continue to resent benefits or burdens being based on skin color are honoring the meaning of Martin Luther King’s ideals much more fully than preferentialists who argue that if he were alive today he would agree with them.

    You fail to differentiate between King’s rhetoric and King’s ideals. King’s rhetoric in his “I have a dream” speech might sound nice to you, but his ideals were racial reparations, racial preferences and (as he privately made known to C.L.R. James) Marxist-Leninism. King’s ideals don’t live on in the current Republican Party platform (though give them another 20 years and they might). If anything, the modern Communist Party USA is the best representation of King’s political ideals.

    1. Mikes August 26, 2013 at 1:11 pm | | Reply

      So, BB, what you seem to be saying is that we should not pay attention to what King said, but to what he told people behind the scenes? If I am reading your comment correctly, King was a bit of a fraud, in your mind. What was intended for public consumption was not what he really believed? Because according to you, his rhetoric and his ideals were worlds apart!

    2. Mikes August 26, 2013 at 1:15 pm | | Reply

      I should add that your comment is confusing – first you say, “This is a matter of King’s openly stated views King made known when he was alive,” and then you say “but his ideals were racial reparations, racial preferences and (as he privately made known to C.L.R. James) Marxist-Leninism.” Were these private communications made public while King was still alive?

      1. B.B. August 26, 2013 at 10:02 pm | | Reply

        So, BB, what you seem to be saying is that we should not pay attention to what King said, but to what he told people behind the scenes?

        […]

        I should add that your comment is confusing – first you say, “This is a matter of King’s openly stated views King made known when he was alive,” and then you say “but his ideals were racial reparations, racial preferences and (as he privately made known to C.L.R. James) Marxist-Leninism.” Were these private communications made public while King was still alive?

        It doesn’t seem confusing to me. King openly stated he supported reparations and racial preferences, while he privately stated to friends and political fellow-travelers he supported Marxism. You can read about King’s openly stated support for preferences and reparations in his own books like Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? and Why We Can’t Wait. David Garrow’s biographical works discusses MLK’s privately stated views on Marxism.

  5. Cobra August 27, 2013 at 12:24 am | | Reply

    I love this conversation.

    I want one of my anti-preferences friends to tell me why an African-American living in the Jim Crow South should have a problem with Marxism.

    –Cobra

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