Stop WhiteWashing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Legacy

Just to make yourself feel better.

Today, America commemorates the achievements and rich legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — a Baptist minister whose tremendous reach and profound impact transcended beyond the pulpit of his Montgomery, Alabama church to create a civil rights movement of resistance against racial segregation and anti-Blackness in the United States. But sadly, White America has retold the story of Dr. King, depicting him as a Black Gandhi, who conceptualized racism in America through only one lens — patience and compassion for the perpetrators of racial prejudice and White supremacist culture. In other words, Dr. King’s predominantly nonviolent stance has been distorted and does not accurately portray his varied perspectives, as they evolved, about racism and protests. This was done to shape the current views of future Black protests and social movements and ultimately condemn, police, and pathologize reactions to racism that are not rooted in love and compassion for those who enact or support racism and White supremacy in America.

Dr. King’s civil rights movement was necessary. But its successes may have masked the reality that the root of racism, anti-Blackness, prejudice, and White supremacy was impossible to simply expose, pull up, and dismantle like an old, discolored, stained rug…