The complicated place of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 2022 America

 Tomorrow is a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.  'Tis a strange day, given the strange place of the man beloved by everybody and nobody in modern America.  Beloved as a symbol, deconstructed in his legacy, and substantively rejected by the modern left and right.  Everyone pays homage to the name because as a symbol, nobody on the left or right is permitted to admit their rejection of that for which he stood, and marched and "fought."

"Concept creep."  This is one of the more important concepts, so to speak, for you to understand in the modern world.  The term comes to us from Nick Haslam, and his analysis of the process by which technical terms in psychology are weakened and politicized.  Terms like trauma, and abuse have technical definitions, but the words also have political value because of their power, so they have been expanded and politicized, and weakened such that they encompass much more mild circumstances and behaviors.  The weaponization of words necessarily weakens them, and detracts from their communicative value.  Concept creep.  For those interested, the full citation is Haslam, N.  (2016)  "Concept Creep:  Psychology's Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology," Psychological Inquiry Volume 27 Issue 1:  1-17.  Format as your discipline requires.

White supremacy is the ideology of the klan, nazis and associated groups.  It is the ideology proclaiming the intrinsic superiority of the white race, however one attempts to define that, and an attempt to construct a non-overlapping racial caste system.  Full stop.  When Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders struggled for even basic freedoms like the right to be in public spaces, the klan basically did run swaths of the country.  The politicians in charge were either members, or paid fealty.  That is what King fought.  Trying to vote, as an African-American in the South meant facing actual, literal death threats.  Lynching.  People were beaten to death for less.  Bombings...

In 1964 and 1965, the civil rights movement had two major legislative victories, but those were not the only legislative victories, and they were accompanied by court victories and policy victories up and down the system.  Uniform?  Of course not.  Yet it would be difficult for any objective analyst to look at the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. as anything other than deeply consequential, and as much a force for good as anyone else in American history.

Who could possibly challenge these claims?

Um...

Well what about the man?  I honestly could not give less of a shit.  Christopher Hitchens was, as ever, fascinatingly contrarian on King, but as I indicated, I do not care one whit about King the man.  In fact, what Hitchens said, ultimately, was that he was just a man, and that's really the point.  We are all just people, some better, some worse, no one perfect, some trying harder, some managing better, and King did better, but what matters is what you do, and in the grand scheme of things, he did good.  Better than good.  Better than damn-near anyone.

We have a general cultural agreement that he is to be honored.  Why?  Because as we all know, or rather, as everyone is required to attest, racism is bad, and since King was our anti-racist monarch, to fail to intone the proper blessings any time his name is invoked is to invite Grand Inquisitor Torquemada into one's presence.  At least if you issue the invitation, you'll expect it.

Does anyone seriously think Donald Trump looks at King and says, yeah, I dig him?  Donald Trump took over the Republican Party, and made the entire party a cult centered around him by doing the following.  In 2008, for the first time, the country elected a black man as president.  But his name was non-European.  Racists lost their shit, and talked themselves into the following batshit conspiracy theory.  Obama was actually born in Kenya, but when he was born, his parents knew that he was going to run for president, and they looked at the eligibility requirements in the Constitution, which precluded naturalized citizens, so they faked the birth certificate to say that he was born in Honolulu when he was really born in Kenya!  Even... though he'd still be a citizen because his mother was a citizen anyway, but let's remember that these people are fucking stupid.

Yes, this is all racism.  You don't need to go on a secret, hidden racism hunt.  The idea that we need to go looking for structural racism and systemic racism and dog whistles and all that because real racism is hidden?  Um... have you been paying attention to the Republican Party?  They don't hide their racism!  They're not ashamed of it!  What do these people have to do-- wear a fuckin' hood?!  Why do you think David Duke got so hard for Trump?  Trade policy?!  What, he's an international economist?  (If he were, he'd have rejected Trump's mercantilist idiocy.  No, really, it was the racism.)

Anyway, I'm gettin' ahead of myself.  So this stuff bubbles up from the dark web, and a loony lawyer named Orly Taitz starts filing frivolous lawsuits after the 2008 election to try to get the election overturned.  Sound familiar?  Of course, she gets her idiot ass tossed out of court.  Flash forward a couple of years, and a half-wit con man who plays a businessman on tv is being interviewed about politics.  The subject of "the birth certificate" comes up.  Trump says that he has just a little bit of doubt.  Not a lot, but a bit.  Problem:  this has all been resolved by this point, so he looks like the dipshit that he is.  He can never admit that he doesn't know what he's talking about, so he only has one way to go.  Double-down on birtherism.

He stumbled into birtherism.  He wasn't seriously a birther.  He was bluffing his way through an interview, not having a clue, and trying to sound like a cautious, open-minded skeptic.  He just got backed into a corner, and the only way out without a mea-culpa was full birtherism.  So that's where he went, and since the GOP reacted like trained seals, he did what any performer does.  He gave the audience what they wanted.

Racism.

They wanted racism.  It was a natural fit for him anyway.

But go ahead and ask any Republican about MLK.  Go ahead.  I'll wait!  Come back when you've got an answer.

....

OK, what'd they say?  Lemme guess:  blah, blah, great man, blah, blah, no more racism, the real racists are on the left, we love MLK, right?

How many times do I have to tell you that I am psychic?

I'm not going to belabor the point of the disjoint, but merely to observe it.  MLK is ours, not yours.  Why?  The power of the symbol.  The same way the flag is a symbol, the mantle of patriotism, and anything else with positive connotations.

So how's about the Voting Rights Act, assholes?  Remember that 1965 accomplishment I mentioned?  Here's the deal.  When SCOTUS struck down pre-clearance in Shelby County, Scalia had himself a moment of honesty.  When the VRA came up for reauthorization, its support was near-unanimous.  In Shelby County, Scalia said, hey, that's bad!  It means the GOP wants to vote against it, but feels pressure to vote for it, because nothing is unanimous!

Here, lemme take care of that for ya'!

As it turned out, as political analysis, he was correct.  How do we know?  He decided to substitute his judgment for Congress's, like he always accused the left flank of the Court, and he struck down pre-clearance with instructions for rewriting it.  All those ostensible supporters of the VRA in the GOP?  Their support vanished like whatever racists eat at a racist cook-out, Scalia having done for them what they lacked the courage to do themselves.  Why?  See above.

We love MLK!  The symbol, that is.  The legislation?  Not so much.

The racism isn't hidden, coded, structural, systemic, or anything.

But we love MLK!

The symbol.  As long as he's just a symbol.

You know what my boy, George Carlin, said about symbols, right?  They're for the symbol-minded.

I'd rather they talk shit about MLK and reauthorize the VRA, but that's just pragmatic, ole' me.

OK, lefties, time for your medicine.

"We can all recognize the distinction between the claims 'I am black' and the claim 'I am a person who happens to be black.'  'I am black' takes the socially imposed identity and empowers it as an anchor of subjectivity.  'I am black' becomes not simply a statement of resistance but also a positive discourse of self-identification, intimately linked to celebratory statements like the black nationalist 'black is beautiful.'  'I am a person who happens to be black,' on the other hand, achieves self-identification by straining for a certain universality [emphasis added] (in effect, 'I am first a person') and for a concommitant dismissal of the imposed category ('black') as contingent, circumstantial, nondeterminant.  There is truth in both characterizations, of course, but they function quite differently depending on the political context.  At this point in history [NOTE:  1991], a strong case can be made that the most critical resistance strategy for disempowered groups is to occupy and defend a politics of social location rather than to vacate and destroy it."

Recognize it?  Full citation:  Crenshaw, K.  (1991)  "Mapping the Margins:  Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color."  Stanford Law Review Volume 43 Number 6: 1241-1299.

Now do you understand why I am presenting you with this reference?  Crenshaw is not only the source of the concept of intersectionality, but one of the central scholars in critical race theory, and this article is one of the central articles.  This passage is one of the most important passages in critical race theory.  Perhaps more cogently than anything else ever written, it encapsulates the mentality of critical race theory's view of racial identity:  a rejection of universal humanity, and a reification of racial boundaries.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

And Crenshaw wants to harden the racial boundaries, and reject universal humanity.  This is central to critical race theory.  At best, one might say that Crenshaw allows for the possibility of some distant future of another kind, but as political strategy, she chooses to harden racial boundaries as a way to achieve concrete goals.  We can give Crenshaw some benefit of positive interpretation, but that raises a host of questions like... OK, so do you want to get to King's dream?  To get there, we harden racial lines first?  I'm a chess player, and I just don't see how this works, and straight up, I've never seen a critical race theorist answer that question.  I have not read anyone who lays out a path that includes first the hardening of racial lines in Crenshaw's vision, and then eventually winds back to King.  They never propose a way back.  If you want King's dream, there has to be some point at which we strive for universal humanity, but the thing is...

... the dirty secret of critical race theory that is all over their law review articles and texts and that they don't admit when they go on tv and try to paint a pretty picture and tell you that it's just a more complete, warts-and-all history...

... is that they don't actually like Martin Luther King, Jr. that much.  Let me say this again, because this is important.  Critical race theory, which has become central to the far left, and a thing that activists and politicians feel they must defend, is a rejection of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Go read that Crenshaw passage.  That's just one example, and I could pick many more, but remember that it is from one of the most important articles in the field.  The source of the concept of "intersectionality."  Crenshaw is not a backbencher.  She's the head honcho, and in historical terms, probably second only to Derrick Bell, if at all, and then only because Bell came first.

King preached universal humanity.  Critical race theory, at its core, is a rejection of universal humanity, and the left has reoriented itself toward critical race theory.  Especially in universities, where I reside, but obviously, this has metastasized, which is why I wrote a long series on it a while back, but at the end of the day, you can have MLK, or CRT, but you can't have both.

So what do critical race theorists say when confronted with the direct contradiction between their anti-universalist philosophy, King, and his symbolic status as he-who-must-not-be-criticized?

Every time, they pull the same trick.  With minor variations in wording, it'll go like this.  "Well, you know, it's funny, but everyone wants to quote that one line, but no one wants to talk about King's economic policies!"

Well, yeah, that's right, and we rarely dwell on the fact that Isaac Newton was also an alchemist, because who cares?

Let's unpack the standard-issue CRT response to MLK, shall we?  There are two things going on here, and they don't even play well together.  First, and most obviously, it is an attempt to change the subject.  The "I Have A Dream" speech is considered as morally unassailable as King himself, and the concept of universal humanity is difficult to contest on a principled basis.  Crenshaw tries to make the argument on the basis of strategy, and even then, tips her hand to the observation that there are some problems in what she is doing, but CRTers really don't like getting pushed on this.

So they need to change the subject.

Where do they go?  Economics.  Why?  A couple of reasons.  First, King was way left on economics, and critical race theory comes straight out of Marxism.  They're going to try to use King to pull you as close as possible to where Bell started, which was, as Bell explained, Marx.  So they are trying to distract you from the fact that they reject King's philosophy of universal humanity, and instead use King to pull you to the left.

This brings us to the second dimension of the tactic.  Argument by authority.  Hopefully, you understand that this is actually a fallacy, but it is distressingly common.  Oh, you like King?  Well, then, you must agree with everything King believed!

Actually, it is possible for a person to be correct about A and incorrect about B.  There's no contradiction there, as long as A and B are distinct.

As for example, Isaac Newton could be correct about calculus, and incorrect about alchemy.  Martin Luther King, Jr. could be correct about race and universal humanity, while being wrong about economics.  There's no contradiction there.

And in fact, there is a bizarre irony to the rhetorical jiujitsu going on here since critical race theorists are trying to use admiration for King's teachings on race to move people to the left on economics based on the premise that if he is right about A, then he must be right about B, when critical race theorists reject his teachings on race!

Total incoherence, and critical race theorists should not be indulged in this nonsense.  The plain fact, written plainly in their texts, is that they fundamentally disagree with King's teachings on race, and the left is reorienting itself around Crenshaw rather than King.

Yet the symbol remains King.

But what about King's accomplishments?

Here, we have a fascinating division between the direction of the Democratic Party writ large, and the critical race theory activists.  The latter have not yet fully succeeded in their attempted takeover on this point.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act.  We're back to this.  This is one of the most important parts of King's legacy, and it has resurfaced as a flashpoint of political conflict.  The Democratic Party, by which I mean here the politicians, voters and major organizers, are treating attempts to reauthorize pre-clearance, and pass new, related legislation as the major priority.  It's doomed, and always was, as I have explained, but the fact that they have made this a priority tells us something important.  It tells you that the party still thinks in terms of King and the civil rights movement.

You know who doesn't?  Critical race theorists.  If you did a poll of critical race theorists, and asked them whether or not they supported the Dems' new legislation, you would see overwhelming support, but that's not my observation for the moment.  There is actually a deeper point about '64, '65 and the substantive historical significance of King's legacy.

When I wrote that long-winded series on critical race theory, I did an extended bit on how and why CRT came about.  Here's the quick version.  Derrick Bell came up through law school in the wake of the successes of the civil rights movement, energized by it.  But here's the thing.  He got his hopes way too high, because passing legislation is only the first step, and even implementing legislation doesn't fix everything.  So Congress passed and Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and then you get a few more pieces of legislation under, ironically enough, President Lemme-Tape-Myself-Spouting-Racial-Epithets, but the history of civil rights is way more complex than that.  There's implementation, court fights, and those court fights go way down to the local level, and there are all sorts of forces working in multiple directions and... history is complicated.

But Bell kinda thought that it was the racial equivalent of Francis Fukuyama's famous oops-book, The End of History.  And... then, if you looked at various outcomes, racial disparities persisted, and in many cases, got bigger.

Critical race theory started as an attempt to explain why what looked like major victories didn't seem to have the effects that Bell expected to see.  Translation:  why he thought King failed.  The whole thing is motivated by a belief that King was a fundamental failure.

So here's a question.  A biggie.  Was Martin Luther King, Jr. a failure?

Critical race theorists say yes.  They look at the income gap, disparities in incarceration, and various other outcomes, and say to hell with King.  To hell with universal humanity, to hell with everything about the American political and legal tradition, which they accuse of being a conspiracy to prop up and maintain a racial hierarchy, making '64 and '65 little more than distractions.

To be sure, the Democratic Party at the elite level does not share this view.  The goings-on in Washington, and the political back-and-forth in the media right now demonstrate that this part of critical race theory has yet to infect much beyond the core group, but read their texts.  This is why Bell started the whole thing.  This is why critical race theory exists.

So we consider the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.  It is difficult to find an American who does not perform the proper rituals of honor towards the symbol, if not the philosophy nor the legacy of the man.  Yet his place in 2022 America is strange for precisely that reason.  The Republican Party's racism is out and proud, louder than it has been in decades, and the left is moving ever closer to Crenshaw's rejection of universal humanity.  When all the Democratic Party did was advocate some affirmative action policies, the right made gestures towards being the real party of MLK, but now, now...

Now it's all nuts.  At the elected level, the Democratic Party is at least gesturing towards reauthorizing the VRA-- doomed though those efforts have always been-- which was a critical part of King's policy legacy, yet the activist left is being taken over by a movement that is deeply opposed to King's philosophy, critical race theory.  Their embrace of such an anti-universalist philosophy has only emboldened the right's hypocritical attempts to claim the mantle of King while centering themselves around the most racist political leader since those faced by King himself, reveling in racist conspiracy theories and spouting every bit of insanity that might ever have been held back.

Nobody reads this pretentious, little blog.  I am, as ever, nothing more than some schlub, shouting into the void.  Yet in the hypothetical case that anyone did read my blathering, that person would have some memory of what I have to say about heroes.  They don't exist.  "Ain't no fuckin' heroes."  Just people, trying to make their way in the world.  Some better, some worse.  A few true villains, like Donald Trump, so cartoonishly evil that he offends my sense of the literary.  And by the numbers, statistically, the world will occasionally produce someone with the direction, will, vision, purpose and fuck it, let's go with virtu, borrowing from Machiavelli's concept combining intelligence and good fortune, all wrapped up with the moral sense to lead people in the right direction.  And good happens.

Not often, because people kinda suck, but sometimes, good happens.

Yet people have a need to idolize, canonize, lionize.  That need makes them just as susceptible to demagogic psychopaths (Trump) as the occasional King.  And so, decades later, having been idolized, canonized, lionized, what do we think of King?  Everyone must claim to love him, lay claim to his legacy.  You can't have Martin Luther King, Jr. and Donald Trump.  You can't have Martin Luther King and Kimberle Crenshaw.

Have I overstated the role of critical race theory in the left?  Well, if you are on the left, what was your reaction to that Crenshaw passage?  Did you recoil a bit?  Are you going to try to rationalize her?  If so, why?  Because the left told you that CRT is good?  That intersectionality is good?  What if you stepped back, and looked at that passage with fresh eyes, not knowing that a good-n-proper lefty is all, pro-CRT'n'stuff, and says "yay-intersectionality," and just read it like it's 1991, three decades after the march?  Would you look at it and say, "wait a minute, King=good!"?  Would you go back to those core principles of universal humanity?

If the left's embrace of CRT has conjured a desire in you to defend Crenshaw-ism against universal humanity, against King, then even if you come back to King in the end, something is happening.  Something I don't like.

So where does Martin Luther King, Jr. fit into American politics today?  He's the book everyone claims to love, but nobody ever reads.  Unifying in that perverse sense, but ironically, Americans fight over ownership of the legacy of the great leader in Thoreau's civil disobedient tradition.

Crenshaw hates him, but can't admit it.  Trump hates him, but can't admit it.  All anyone can do is quote a line and perform a ritual.  How much progress have we made?  Bell raised some interesting questions.  I'll give him that.  I wish we could have some intelligent conversations about them, but with Trump trying to claw his way to dictatorship and Crenshaw-ists trying to reify every stupid, fucking division and turn everyone against each other...

Read King.  Read fucking Thoreau.  Emerson.  Yeah, I still dig that 19th Century shit.  Doesn't matter who they were, doesn't matter what their economics were.  Ideas.  Interesting ideas.  Good ideas.  Fuck heroes.  Ain't no such thing.

Feelin' some blues this morning.  Let's go with Big Joe Williams, "The Death of Dr. Martin Luther King."