Posted on 01/12/2006 9:17:23 PM PST by Mr. Silverback
At this time of year I always find myself gladdened by the great contributions of Martin Luther King Jr., but also a little dismayed. I find myself wondering how this man of love and action was replaced by icons of hating and waiting.
If you think hate is too strong a word, consider the case of Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton being given prominence at Rosa Park’s funeral. Farrakhan is at least as well known for his praise of Hitler, his statements against Jews and his belief that whites were created inherently evil as he is for his “leadership” in the Black community.
For his part, Sharpton has arguably gotten people killed with his hate speech. At a rally against Freddy’s Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned clothing store in Harlem in 1995, Sharpton condemned such “white interlopers.” He also stood idly by while an associate said, “We’re going to see that this cracker suffers. Reverend Sharpton is on it.” A member of the crowd later burned Freddy’s to the ground, killing seven people and himself. Sharpton later asked, “What’s wrong with denouncing white interlopers?”
Imagine the dismay on MLK’s face if someone had told him that fifty years after fifty years after segregationists bombed his house and burned Montgomery churches to try and stop what Rosa Parks began, Parks would be laid to rest and two of the most prominent people in the room would be vicious anti-Semites. Sharpton and Farrakhan belonged at the funeral of a civil rights pioneer about as much as a Grand Wizard of the Klan does.
Recent foaming at the mouth has not been restricted to Sharpton and Farrakhan. In 2004, the NAACP was angered when President Bush skipped their convention, speaking to the Urban League instead. NAACP leaders Kweisi Mfume and Julian Bond never did say why they wanted to hear a speech from a man who they had portrayed as a supporter of lynching during the 2000 campaign, who they had accused of trying to bring back Jim Crow laws and of leading “the Taliban wing of American politics” and a party whose “idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side.”
It was like the Freedom From Religion Foundation complaining that they couldn’t get Billy Graham to come give them a sermon, yet the media reported it as if it were a real snub and a relevant controversy.
I could go on, for there are many examples. What really is dismaying is not the hating, but the waiting.
In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” MLK responded to a group of white clergy who had written a group statement calling his work “unwise and untimely.” He wrote “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant 'Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’” He went on to say that the biggest obstacle to full justice was not the hardcore racists, but the “white moderates” who valued the preservation of order so much they would let injustice thrive.
Today, if you slipped some truth serum to those who claim MLK’s mantle, the word that might slip out the most frequently is “wait.”
“Wait, pay no attention to the nearly four decades of destruction our policies have caused or the bizarre disconnect between our vision and that of people like Rosa Parks and MLK. Wait, while we say things about innocent Americans that are little different from the vitriol the segregationists said about us in the Fifties and Sixties. Wait, if we keep doing things the same way we’ll finally get a different result.”
“Wait, judge us by the color of our skin, not by the content of our character.”
The good news, however, is that these haters are destined for extinction, because they offer a “product” with a very shaky level of demand in the political market. African-American economist Walter Williams has said their endless search for racial grievances is like finding that the March of Dimes is still spending all their time on fighting polio, and he is right.
Dr. King spoke of the “jangling discords” of segregation being merged “into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” The tones certainly aren’t perfect yet, but every day the sound of “all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,” getting in tune gets louder, and we can see a day where that sound will completely drown out those who hate in the name of justice.
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Great!
Thank you ma'am!
very well written, thank you.
EXCELLENT OP-ED PING!
Bump.
You have a column now? Good for you! Last I saw you, you were doing the Caption O Ramas, this is better though! (not that I don't miss those!)
Please put me on your monthy column ping list. I'd love to read more like this!
You're welcome, and I appreciate the compliment.
Thanks very much for your compliments.
Thank you very much for the compliment and the ping!
Bump again. Shameless self-promotion bump.
Thank you, and you are added!
Someone's got to do it.
:-))
Well said!
Thank you!
Back at ya', ya big gorilla!
Let's hope you are right and they fade away.
Thanks, good work!
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