It’s Martin Luther King day here in the US. I thought I’d celebrate it with an open thread, and with a passage from King’s Where Do We Go From Here (1967), which takes on an added relevance in light of a lot that has happened in the last year or so.
Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a … mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn. … Loose and easy language about equality, resonant resolutions about brotherhood fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook. He remembers that with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever-present tendency to backlash.
NOTE: As is always the case with these open threads: No MRAs, no Trolls.
H/T — A Riot Is the Language of the Unheard’: 9 MLK Quotes the Mainstream Media Won’t Cite, by Kali Holloway on AlterNet