Conservatives Would Ban Teaching the Real MLK

Spurred by right-wing activists and media, state lawmakers across the country have passed legislation to ban the teaching of so-called Critical Race Theory in schools. Although most haven’t been able to define CRT — an academic analysis with which few engage outside of law school — reactionaries are using the term as a catch-all for any substantive discussions of racism in America.

So, in Idaho, lawmakers have criticized teaching any materials from writers of color and even the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (one of the central pieces of the American literary canon) because it suggests that “white people are bad” and “black people are innocent victims.” Of course, Tom Robinson really didn’t rape Mayella Ewell. And those white folks who (spoiler alert) convicted him anyway and then killed him when he tried to escape from jail were pretty awful. But apparently, even that’s too much for the children of Boise to digest. I suppose Harper Lee should have had Atticus Finch deliver a stirring soliloquy about “Black-on-Black crime” for the sake of balance.

But I digress.

The new laws restricting anti-racist education have followed a pretty standard script, prohibiting material that suggests the existence of systemic white privilege or that racism itself is a structural force. As the Florida law explains, students must not be taught that “racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.” Instead, they should be instructed that racism is merely a product of prejudiced individuals, acting with no greater structural purpose in mind. In short, the right seeks to ban anti-racist education because they believe it sullies the country’s good name.

And by discussing white privilege or suggesting that racism has elevated whites relative to persons of color, anti-racist education, to its critics, violates the colorblind ideal they insist was the vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Recently a far lesser Jr. (the Donald Trump version) tweeted that Critical Race Theory trampled on “King’s dream.” You know the one, right? About judging people “by the content of their character” rather than the color of their skin? It’s the only line from King any conservative knows, let alone quotes. It’s as if this moral icon said only this one anodyne thing in his entire life before being murdered, presumably for having said it.

Yet not only do conservatives regularly misinterpret the “content of character” line so as to condemn affirmative action or any race-conscious efforts to promote equity (efforts King supported during his life), they also overlook the copious evidence indicating that King viewed America and white folks in precisely the way they find so offensive. All of which means, if these anti-CRT statutes withstand judicial scrutiny, they could potentially cancel Martin Luther King, Jr. from the nation’s curriculum.

How, after all, would teachers be able to teach the real MLK, given King’s understanding of racism as an ingrained and systemic force? In a March 1968 speech in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, he said explicitly:

…there must be a recognition on the part of everybody in this nation that America is still a racist country…And we will never solve the problem of racism until there is a recognition of the fact that racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation.

It was a sentiment that also featured prominently in his final essay, written just prior to his assassination and published after his death, in which he noted:

…despite its virtues and attributes, America is deeply racist, and its democracy is flawed both economically and socially.

In fact, King explained, America had always been beset by these flaws, thereby rendering the promises of the nation’s founding hollow. As he intoned, with prose that would fit neatly within the narrative of the much-maligned 1619 Project from the New York Times:

It is time that we stopped our blithe lip service to the guarantees of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. These fine sentiments are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, but that document was always a declaration of intent rather than of reality.

Had conservatives even listened to the entire “I Have a Dream” speech, rather than just the one line they fetishize, they would have seen this same systemic analysis. Therein, King argued that America had “given the Negro people a bad check: a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’.” He wasn’t suggesting a handful of bad apples had done this. He wasn’t simply blaming a dozen or so Southern sheriffs in league with assorted Klansmen. Instead, King was explicitly faulting America as a society.

As he made clear in his final essay:

…the black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes…It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.

King not only viewed racism as a systemic matter but also as one maintained by white ambivalence and ill-will. In other words, King was hardly colorblind in his analysis of the nation’s problems or who was to blame for them. In April 1967, in his speech “The Other America,” delivered at Stanford, King noted:

White America has allowed itself to be indifferent to race prejudice…The American people are infected with racism — that is the peril…

And in a slightly different version of the same speech, delivered shortly before his assassination, King elaborated:

What is it America has failed to hear?…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.

In his above-mentioned final essay, King explained that although many whites of goodwill had joined the freedom struggle, even paying for that commitment with their lives:

…the largest part of white America is still poisoned by racism, which is as native to our soil as pine trees, sagebrush, and buffalo grass.

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This was, to King, because:

Men of the white West…have grown up in a racist culture, and their thinking is colored by that fact. They have been fed on a false mythology and tradition that blinds them to the aspirations and talents of other men. They don’t really respect anyone who is not white.

But perhaps King’s most pointed criticism of structural racism — and the explicit naming of white Americans as its source — can be found in his September 1967 address to the American Psychological Association. Therein, King insisted that “White America needs to understand that it is poisoned to its soul by racism.” And when discussing the urban riots that had rocked several Northern cities during the summer, he made clear where the blame resided:

The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance, and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes, but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society…he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society…if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man.

Furthermore, King celebrated that Black Americans were rebelling against white America’s perceptions and values, having “discovered that their plight was not a consequence of superficial prejudice but was systemic.” To King, this was a positive development because “the philosophy and morals of the dominant white society are not holy or sacred but in all too many respects are degenerate and profane.”

In short, King’s view of the nation and its white population was precisely that which the right would now prohibit from being taught, at least if articulated as a current-day reality. But even examined as a historical perspective anti-CRT laws would require such matters to be discussed “impartially.” Assuming teachers felt comfortable teaching the material at all, students would have to hear a “balanced” presentation of the America King was facing. Though this wouldn’t require presenting the pro-segregationist position (that would run afoul of the legislation’s prohibitions on material advocating discrimination), it could require students to consider the views of whites who, according to polling at the time, thought there was no race problem in America, and that Black folks were exaggerating their suffering. In other words, the laws would require students to consider respectfully the opinions of whites who denied systemic racism, not merely in 2021, but even in 1961 (or 1850 for that matter)— which is to say, the opinions of fools.

Either way, conservative activists and lawmakers are leading an assault on truth and memory. We should confront them with the real MLK and force them to admit they would cancel him if they had their way. They should be required to publicly acknowledge that they disavow his views — the views of perhaps this nation’s only secular saint.

Finally, we should confront white Americans with King’s words from his last book, Where Do We Go From Here? — words that succinctly explain the right’s vicious attempt at censorship. In that final volume, King lamented the unwillingness of most whites to “re-educate themselves out of racial ignorance,” because, as he explained, with words every bit as relevant today as they were 53 years ago:

It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.

MLK was right. The American right is wrong. And now is the time for everyone to choose a side.

I’m an antiracism educator/author. My latest book is Dispatches from the Race War (City Lights, December 2020). I post audio at patreon.com/speakoutwithtimwise

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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