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KeepItReal

(7,769 posts)
Tue Nov 10, 2015, 12:52 PM Nov 2015

Good analysis of the U. of Missouri president's resignation speech: He still doesn't get it.

Great story at WaPo's The Fix:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/10/university-of-missouri-president-tim-wolfes-very-telling-resignation-speech/

In fact, almost nowhere in this still-young week has there been a better example of the tension between the conservative and liberal views of race and the politics around it than behind the podium where University of Missouri President Timothy M. Wolfe stood and resigned Monday.

...

LOPEZ: You know what I thought here? I thought about the quote the football players used — what they said in explaining why they felt they could not play. I think they referenced a line from Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter From a Birmingham Jail, when he wrote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality..." I think those students meant that. I wish that the president had read that letter at some point -- or certainly today before he resigned.

Remember that what King was talking about in that letter, who he was talking to. It was a letter to other clergy who were not happy about the Birmingham protests, who said that change would come with patience, if they behaved well and waited. They were urging temperance, calm and process. And what King said in that letter was that is not the answer. We have already waited. The answer for any moral person in the face of injustice is protest and disruption, nonviolent coordinated action geared towards creating the circumstances of producing actual change.

When I heard this speech, really from the very beginning, it was clear this president has espoused the view of the clergy [to whom King wrote from jail], whether he recognizes that or not. It was clear as soon as he turned to, "How did we get here?" Wasn't he or his refusal to talk and negotiate pretty deeply involved?

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Good analysis of the U. of Missouri president's resignation speech: He still doesn't get it. (Original Post) KeepItReal Nov 2015 OP
Yes, short on point analysis Kind of Blue Nov 2015 #1
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