Martin Luther King’s hate mail eerily resembles criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement

[loyalsister]

In the last year or so, as the Black Lives Matter movement has taken off, the cause has been criticized by (mostly) white people asking, “Yeah, but what about this?”

It turns out that this argument has been in style for at least half a century.

Indeed, this type of discourse is nothing new, as we can see when we examine the hate mail that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It’s overwhelming how the fear of the status quo being changed has been something white America can’t stop thinking about–and loudly announcing how it’s a problem–for so long now. These messages could have been written yesterday in the comments of a Facebook post as easily as they were on stationery or in a telegram 50 years ago.

Anonymity was key, of course.

http://fusion.net/story/184032/black-lives-matter-martin-luther-king-hate-mail/

The comparison is also apt vs conservative commentators. In that case there is no anonymity, what has changed other than having a Black president and being allegedly "post- racial"?

I have thought for a long time that racists felt emboldened to display as much hate as they can muster because their horrific vision of Blacks taking over is coming true and they expect that those of us who are white will all soon be slaves.

[H2O Man]

1. Recommended.

Very interesting perspective. And it focuses on the irrational fears of a substantial portion of white America, who fear the thought of being the minority in our society.

Thank you for this.

[loyalsister]

2. RWers are invoking MLK

with no clue to the similarity of the messages of his enemies. Even those who lived during that time.

[DirkGently]

3. MLK supported Planned Parenthood and Socialism.

RWers always seem to skip over those parts, too.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2014/01/20/3177871/martin-luther-king-radicalism/

King was a strident critic of capitalism and materialistic society, and urged Americans to “move toward a democratic socialism.” Referring to the now iconic Greensboro Lunch Counter sit-ins, he asked, “What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?”

“I have always been deeply interested in and sympathetic with the total work of the Planned Parenthood Federation,” he said in 1960. He connected reproductive justice with racial justice, noting that the impoverished African American community had “a special and urgent concern” in family planning. Because of these views, he believed access to contraception and family planning programs should be funded by the government.

[loyalsister]

4. It's not often

that most of us would say "that neurosurgeon needs to get an education." But in the case of Ben Carson...