Just when you think they couldn’t get more offensive, they do.
The passing of Coretta Scott King last week marked the very end of an era that in fact had been over well before the assassination of her husband, Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. I had always admired Coretta King as a beautiful and stylish lady (here’s a lovely photo of her on La Shawn Barber’s blog) who stuck by her husband through many ups and downs and raised four children under circumstances that must often have been harrowing, for the oldest ones were only in grade school when their father was murdered.
Coretta Scott King should be admired because she was pretty and well-dressed. Forget her own professional accomplishments — she was married to someone famous!
(And is it just me, or can you also feel Charlotte Allen practically biting her tongue to keep from saying, “And she was so articulate, too!”)
The problem was that King was all too successful in his campaign to make good people across the nation aware of the grave wrong of legally sanctioned racial discrimination in the South.
Because before King, they just weren’t aware of how wrong legally sanctioned racial discrimination was. But that King — he just went too far. He should have told those good people, “This is wrong” and left it at that. But wouldn’t you know it — that man went ahead and tried to change things. And that’s just plain shameful.
In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, nullifying wage discrimination for members of ethnic minorities and also women. The momentous Civil Rights Act of 1964 quickly followed, and after that, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Two years after King’s famous letter, the struggle was over, legally speaking. And just as quickly, King’s strategies–restrained and dignified marches and sit-ins by people who had carefully schooled themselves not to fight violence with violence–went completely out of style among African-American political leaders.
Anyone who thinks that “the struggle was over” in 1965 has their head stuck way too deep in their ass for me to even try and seriously engage. The struggle was over in 1965? Is she kidding?
Sadly, no.
Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers replaced King as the face of the civil rights movement, and the urban riot, with its burning, looting, random murders, racial hatred, and, ultimately, blackmail of a frightened white establishment, became the preferred form of protest, to the dismay of King, who repeatedly deplored racial violence in his speeches and writings. The aftermath of such tactics–burnt-out inner cities, omnipresent racial quotas, a massive and debilitating welfare state, and the omnipresence of hate-rousing demagogues such as Al Sharpton–are still with us.
Al Sharpton really gets under conservatives’ skin, doesn’t he? And this is one of the most hateful and racist things I’ve read in a while. “Blackmail of the frightened white establishment”? What exactly were we blackmailed into doing — letting blacks into our golf clubs? This construction of the scary, aggressive black mob going after the poor innocent white ladies is such a classic racist idea that I’m almost disappointed that Charlotte couldn’t come up with a more original outlet for her racism.
King himself, pushed to the sidelines, dissipated his energies on anti-Vietnam War protests and a futile and simplistic war on urban black poverty in the North. King, the product of a genteel and deeply religious rural southern black middle-class, was ill-equipped to understand northern city slum-dwellers, whose problems stemmed far more from widespread moral collapse than from institutional racism.
King was ill-equipped to understand nothern blacks, but Charlotte Hayes — she understands. It has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with the lack of morals that these blacks had. If only they had been better Christians, they wouldn’t have suffered. Instead, they chose sin, kind of like King, who wasted his time protesting the Vietnam War. After all, it’s fine to argue for nonviolence when doing do is effectively protecting white people in the U.S. But when you start to argue for nonviolence to protect non-white people overseas, you’re just taking it too far.
By the time King died, he was already obsolete. His Southern Christian Leadership Conference quickly slid into shambles and irrelevance after his death. Were King still alive today, he would be regarded as an interesting but superannuated pioneer–a Where Is He Now? figure–whose time had come and gone as far as black politics were concerned.
What. An. Asshole. That is all I can say about Charlotte Hayes. To say that King was “obsolete” at the time of his death is not only disrepectful, it’s historically revisionist. This woman can rot.
Of course Martin Luther King is not still with us, so we remember his greatness instead, and we look for the hopeful signs of civility and a renewed moral conservativism among the vastly enlarged black middle class whose existence he helped foster. The same goes for Coretta King. We remember her for the great lady she was during extraordinarily difficult times, not the unfortunate turns that the movement she once represented has taken.
Un-fucking-believable. The unfortunate turns that the civil rights movement has taken? Like what, continuing to demand equality? And does anyone else think it’s a little disrespectful to “remember” Coretta Scott King by writing an entire essay about her husband, and devoting two sentences to her — one about how she’s “stylish,” and one of which says “The same goes for Coretta King”? (Note also that she’s “Coretta King” here, not her full name — just her husband’s).
This piece of shit rememberance truly encompasses what the “Independent Women’s Forum” stands for: Identity only through one’s husband; the kind of conservatism that would literally take us back to 1950 in every sphere; and the general supremacy of white people.
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Stupid historian quibble: can we stop using “historically revisionist” to mean “a big lie”? There’s nothing wrong with being revisionist: if you’re not revising something, you’re probably not saying anything very important. The problem is when you’re historically *inaccurate*, with extra bonus problem points when that inaccuracy is intentional.
If the purpose of the revisionism is to lie, then, no, we can’t because it is a big lie. If MLK,jr was irrelevant at the time of his death there would not have been such a big brouhaha over it and Hoover wouldn’t have still been spying on him.
Revisionism has its own problems in general. The primary one is being removed from the time frame and hence nuances of the time in question. The later in time the revisionism takes place the larger the problem. A generalism, I realize.
I believe the term is “well-spoken.”
Wow. With one fell swoop, you’ve just invalidated my entire discipline! All history writing is revisionist. If you’re not revising something, there’s no reason to say anything. Historians aren’t in the business of telling the same story over and over again, in slightly prettier ways.
I don’t have time to argue about this, and it’s major thread drift anyway, but I think it you think about it a bit, you’ll realize there are big problems with it. I mean, if we accept the contemporary explanation for the European witchcraft trials, we have to admit that they were caused by the devil playing on women’s morally weak natures. Anything else is revisionism. Feminist analysis of most history goes out the door, since most things weren’t analysed by feminists until the early 20th century, and feminist history was totally revisionist. Social history goes, too, since the idea that ordinary people matter and are the stuff of history is also revisionist.
Historians don’t use “revisionist” in a pejoritive way. I’ve only seen that usage among the general public, and it reflects confusion about how the study of history works.
(Good lord. I am the queen of thread drift. Sorry.)
Wow. It’s remarkable how overt racism has become acceptable again in the last few years…
Most history is bunk.
But, if I have contemporary sources such as the Federalist Papers I’m going to depend heavily on them. If Hamilton says he meant one thing and somebody 200 years later says, no you didn’t….
The above “history” of Martin and Coretta is bunk. Being a contemporary of that time (geezer here) I know so. Some kid with no historical perspective might read it and accept it.
It is becoming increasingly popular for right wingers to claim they know what their opponents in the center and left really want to say – and then put their own words in the mouths of people who were or are totally opposed to them. There is a poster in the Washington metro by anti-Roe groups that claims that even pro-choice lawyers are (now) saying that Roe is bad law. No names are given of course, just some set of unnamed lawyers that anti-choice people claim are pro-choice and anti-Roe.
Democrats, liberals and others of the left have never had a problem of speaking out for themselves when their ideas diverge from the orthodoxy, so the political right has no need to put words in dead leaders’ mouths except to get them to say in death what they would never say in life. Same goes for these nameless yet supposed pro-choice lawyers.
Jill: I’m sorry, I had to vent somewhere, hope don’t mind my additional comments. I am not about to scream, age has given me some calm. But that said, may I add:
Isn’t it indeed convenient that he was murdered? And, the white establishment just would like to forget that it was the white repressionists who assassinatd him, but they oh, just L-O-V-E to preach about how the black folks can’t stop killing eachother and thus hurting their own destiny.
No, Madam, the press loved to look at the most extreme portions of the civil rights movement in order to brand them all as wild, black men who don’t know their place and make the whte folks in the burbs lock their doors and their minds against the impending threat.
Non-violent protest is and will always be, a serious part of the movements involved in drawing attention to continued social injustice. The white establishment learned from the sixties that if you IGNORE them; as long as the general public remains ignorant and doesn’t join them, they will die off. The establishment would just as soon see that they are strangled to death. The press provides this service gladly, giving them no more than a cursory glance. Appeasing the white house and not threatening their “access” – a myth that the press must be invitied created by the Reagan era of press bashing. And lets forget advertisers who can sell better during entertainment rather than solid, often disturbing information.
Also of course, lets not leave out a large portion of the public that wishes nothing more than to be sedated.
Sure, because we’d rather just forget that there may still be injustice going on today. Who cares? Not the white pundits who constantly purport the Republican mantra that self interest is the only interest worthy of concern and that being the self interest of those who have a buck to make at the expense of the wider public. The public good has been reduced to ‘interest groups’ and other double-speak that serves to bamboozle the public into thinking that any change in the present power structure means a loss to them. The biggest lie told by the conservatives yet. Everything is deduced from that point. White folks don’t hate, the middle class doesn’t hate the poor. White middle class folks don’t fear black assertion.
This is a text book example of blaming the victim. First off, the white folks have always had a serious problem in coming to terms with angry people, much less angry black men. Even when I was an activist, I constantly had to deal with people who considered themselves “in the movement’ (whatever it was at the moment) who couldn’t cope with my apparent anger about the way poor women were being treated.
The polite old nigger who says ‘yes ‘em Isa do that shore thang.’ The “Step and Fetch It” characture (sp?) is so alive and well, especially in the North as to serve as a total black out (no pun intended) of any substantive progress on race issues within the white middle class.
Sorry, but in my view, many, many rap artists serve the perpetuate this mythology and make tons of money doing it at the expense of real progress. Of course, they are not entirely responsible for waking up white people from their slumber either, us white people have responsibility for our own cultures’ views. The myth of the evil black man ready to rape and pillage burns brights and strong, fed as it were on many fronts.
Oh, that’s right, reduce his signifigance completely. Again, isn’t it just damn convenient that he was killed before he had a chance to see his movment move forward? Also, the disintegration of the SLC says absolutely nothing about the civil rights movement as they SLC was NOT the movement entirely, but pundits and dismissers all over always want to find a way to minimize and dismiss the signifigance of any movement they find threatening. She is doing her part.
I HIGHLY doubt that King would be irrelevant today were he still alive, as the movement has not by any means ended. South African Afikaners probably wish they never jailed Mandala but had assassinated him instead. The fact that the civil rights movement still has so far to go serves to illustrate what so many white folks refuse to recognize; 1) that slavery built most of this country and as a result the country was built on the construct of racism to support and sustain it 2) that a culture constructed to serve the latter cannot be changed overnight and is rooted deep in the American psyhe and still serves the existing power structure quite well.
Oh Gawd almighty. And she might as well go on to say that she longs for the time when you could hire a black maid nice and cheap and they’d be so civil and happy to serve, what now with all their uppity attitudes and all? Oh how that fine black civilization is crumbling before our eyes! Let us all weep for the end of Step and Fetch It and his shuckin’ and a-jivin’ for the entertainment of the white folks. For the end of the happy field hands who worked 18 hours a day bringin’ in the cotton for my grand daddy so he could make a big fat buck to build his nice big house in town while the hired hands stayed outside of town in their shantys on the edge of the fields where they belonged.
Deny that it exists and you have no problems. Period. That is the function of the paid pundits who work to serve the establishment, denial, denial and denial.
Some of Kings later speeches are chillingly relevant today. He was far from obsolete. As for Coretta – she was a lot more than a pretty face – her words in favor of queer marriage alone secure her a place in my own personal hall of heros. So gross that the women involved in activism get whitewashed (pardon the clumsy colloquialism) as bland noble care-givers. CSK was a kick-ass activist in her own right – can’t she be remembered as such?
Oh, sure. Just like Jesse Jackson, right? He certainly still has the power to get the wingnuts in a lather.
There’s a difference between relying on, say, Sir Francis Galton’s essays to establish his position on eugenics and relying on studies conducted by him for data on heredity and intelligence. Contemporary sources frequently come with contemporary bias. Would you trust Alexander Hamilton to tell you about racism during his time?
I would love to know what you think of this – I found it when I was looking for a mommy & me…
http://www.abortmemommy.org/
OK – now think about what that site advocates and what is actually the position of the pro-choice movement.
Just a teeny bit of difference, isn’t there?
I apologize Jill, zuzu, piny. I wasnt trying to hijack this thread – I couldnt find anywhere to send an email to any of you and I really wanted to know what you guys thought.
tigtog – the site is either satire or an idiot-savant attempt at satire. Either way I think the audience that would seriously mistake it for a pro-choice site is very, very small.
I couldn’t find any outside link to see who put it out – anyone know more?
They sure are stupid, too. As I’m sure has been said here before, you cannot abort a fetus, you abort a PREGNANCY. They refer constantly to aborting babies/children.
piny:
(1778/10)
New York- Alexander Hamilton endorses the plan of South Carolina’s Henry Laurens to use slaves as soldiers in the south. “I have not the least doubt that the Negroes will make very excellent soldiers,” says Hamilton , “. . . for their natural faculties are as good as ours.” Hamilton reminds the Continental Congress that the British will make use of Negroes if the Americans do not. In Hamilton’s words: “The best way to counteract the temptations they will hold out, will be to offer them ourselves.”
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