Comment by jakelazaroff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jakelazaroff | Hacker News Reader

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Which of MLK's values did we once hold that we've now abandoned?

Anti capitalism and pro economic redistribution?

> The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism. The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power. [1]

That white people should radically support racial justice?

> I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice. [2]

That riots are understandable in the face of oppression?

> But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?...It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity. [3]

The fact is that MLK was a radical who was opposed by most white people. When he died, 75% of the American public disliked him. It's only in retrospect that conservatives have tried to whitewash his legacy, pretending to support racial progress while opposing the very things he stood for.

[1] https://www.cityheightscdc.org/stories/mlk-quotes-too-radica...

[2] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/story/...

[3] https://www.salon.com/2017/01/16/martin-luther-king-jr-the-r...

“I have a Dream” was delivered to an audience of a quarter million and televised to millions more and has continued to be a cornerstone of public school education at least where I grew up where we would listen to the audio and later stream the video. That’s the breakthrough hit.

We don’t treasure everything even about the people we like. MLK was a man, and therefore it is safe to assume a complicated person who developed and changed his beliefs a lot throughout his life. When he seized the opportunity to deliver a speech to the nation, it wasn’t “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and it wasn’t sympathy for rioters, it was “I Have a Dream”.

Do you see the implications of what you’re saying? The reason that speech is cherry-picked to be the cornerstone of public school education — the reason it’s the “breakthrough hit” — is that it allows people to avoid confronting the radical and uncomfortable aspects of MLK’s demands.

This is an example of survivorship bias. MLK obviously didn’t anticipate when he made the “I Have A Dream” speech that he would have only a few more years to live. It’s seen as representative not because he thought it was a unique opportunity to make an impact, but because it’s what people chose to highlight once he was gone.

> Do you see the implications of what you’re saying?

Yes.

> The reason that speech is cherry-picked to be the cornerstone of public school education — the reason it’s the “breakthrough hit” — is that it allows people to avoid confronting the radical and uncomfortable aspects of MLK’s demands.

Sure it’s cherry picked, but it was also the message he delivered with the most weight to the largest audience with the largest resonance to that audience that we valued enough to continue carrying forward.

We don’t carry forward every message by every person, and we don’t carry forward every message for every person we do carry messages forward for. This was what he had to say that we valued the most.

> This is an example of survivorship bias. MLK obviously didn’t anticipate when he made the “I Have A Dream” speech that he would have only a few more years to live.

It’s not just survivorship bias though. This was the culmination of the March on Washington. It was kind of a big deal. You have the biggest live audience you can ever expect to have in your lifetime, even if you’re Martin Luther King Jr, so what do you think he should have said instead with the fantastic advantage of hindsight that you possess? Nowadays we can post on YouTube and get tens of thousands of hits every day as long as we’re better than mediocre. Limited opportunities for engagement force you to focus on what you think is most important to say at that moment.

> Sure it’s cherry picked, but it was also the message he delivered with the most weight to the largest audience with the largest resonance to that audience that we valued enough to continue carrying forward.

I agree, but I don’t think it reflects particularly well on the audience! Like, carry this one step further. Why is this the message that resonated with everyone? Why not white moderates being the stumbling block to racial justice, or capitalism being evil?

I’ll give you a hint: it’s not because people actually want or care about racial equality.

> You have the biggest live audience you can ever expect to have in your lifetime, even if you’re Martin Luther King Jr, so what do you think he should have said instead with the fantastic advantage of hindsight that you possess?

I have to imagine that, had he seen this future, he would not have said the line about judging people by the content of their character, because the result has been the co-opting of his image to undermine everything he stood for. Like, people will literally use that quote to argue that MLK would have opposed affirmative action, when the exact opposite is true.

> I agree, but I don’t think it reflects particularly well on the audience! Like, carry this one step further. Why is this the message that resonated with everyone? Why not white moderates being the stumbling block to racial justice, or capitalism being evil?

I can think of several reasons:

1. It was sincere.

2. It was likely the only speech anyone had ever seen from MLK, statistically speaking. It’s not like they were serialized.

3. It was correct. If we are to judge people at all, we should do so on the basis of their character, not the color of the skin. One takes consideration and trust in one’s own judgment, the other you only need at least one working eye for.

4. It was non-confrontational: “I have a Dream” not “I have a Problem”.

5. It was the culmination of the 1963 March on Washington. Marching on Washington wasn’t exactly a common affair back then: it drew attention, as it was designed to.

6. It was the speech he chose to deliver to the largest audience he had ever had in his life and was likely to ever have as far as he knew. Basically in effect “do or die” for at least that set of participants. If it had been a failure, there were no take-backsies, no second chances, no just trying again next year. So the right message, at the right time, delivered to everyone he could to try and compel them to at least meet in the middle.

I mean, he could have said something else, but he also probably wouldn’t have been as effective and I probably wouldn’t have learned about him in school. Maybe you have a case to make that it would have been better that way.

> I have to imagine that, had he seen this future, he would not have said the line about judging people by the content of their character, because the result has been the co-opting of his image to undermine everything he stood for. Like, people will literally use that quote to argue that MLK would have opposed affirmative action, when the exact opposite is true.

Best line in the speech and you would want him to gut it! Who knows, maybe with foresight that matched your hindsight he would have. The problem isn’t that he said it, the problem you have is that people are citing that specific passage to make an argument about what his position would be.

He’s dead, and has been for a long time. He doesn’t have any arguments to make anymore, not against capitalism and not for affirmative action and not about how the moderate whites in his opinion just might on a bad day need some non-non-violent direct action shaped suspiciously like the good Reverend’s boot. The tradeoff against people misrepresenting his words to argue against something he probably would support decades into the future is that he got to be persuasive when he needed to be persuasive, but feel free to hop in the TARDIS and tell him that his needs at the time are less significant than your needs in the potential future. Only the living get to keep arguing, for everyone else the case is submitted.

I have a dream in which we are all marathon winners. We are done running. We have medals and confetti and cake. It’s a joyous time, and whether we finished the race in four hours or fourteen hours doesn’t matter, because we have all finished it. That’s my dream!

Right now, though, right now some of us are moving at a good pace, while others aren’t even moving in the right direction. Some of us are incapable of moving on our own. Others are being held back. Helping those who are struggling most right now makes sense, right?

You wouldn’t interrupt a marathon to object that encouraging the slowest runner isn’t fair, since the dream is for everybody to have a medal and cake.

Agreed. The dream is for everyone to have a medal and cake. Even for disadvantaged while people in the US, who are not “colonizers” or some lucky “white privilege” beneficiaries.

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