Christians, MLK Day and Historical Amnesia

[Sandra Craft]

From the blog of Rachel Held Evans:  Christians, MLK Day and Historical Amnesia

Inviting a white supremacist to speak on MLK day and then supposing that a short tribute video will make up for it shows just how real and pervasive the "shallow understanding" and "lukewarm acceptance" King warned about remains a part of white Christian culture.

Altho Evans approaches this from her perspective as a Xtian, I think the problem covers a lot of groups.  I know I can't bring up white privilege with other whites without getting a lot of push back along the "my life hasn't been easy!" lines, which completely ignores the difference between personal privilege and institutional privilege, or that privilege doesn't mean your life is going to be a cake walk.

Then there's the whole "do this not that" business: blacks protest injustice and are told to tone it down, make it more palatable to whites; women protest and are told to wait until other (ie, more important) issues are settled first.  But politeness goes nowhere, and other issues never get settled.  It was all really just a way of saying "your problem isn't our problem so bug off and take care not to make us uncomfortable while you do that".

Obviously I'm in a mood tonight, so I'm stop the tangent here and let Evans say her piece.

[Firebird]

Thanks for posting that. I'm 35 so was born long after King died and became an almost mythical figure in US. So I don't think I fully understood the social forces he was up against until the recent fight for LGBT righst such as marriage unfolded before my eyes, and I heard many of the same arguments that I assumed had been confined to the dustbin of history used to justify prejudice all over again. It really amazes me how history repeats itself,  and the ease with which people ignore its lessons no matter how recent.

And Obama's victory, far from making racism "dead", showed just how alive it is. The "Black Lives Matter" banner down the street from me has been vandalized and torn down numerous times, and I've seen multiple people complain that it's a divisive message and BLM protesters are the ones who are racist, amazingly.