Thank you for this! I'm increasingly an advocate of racial abolition and hadn't realized MLK was in a similar place. It does mesh well with his take on affirmative action ("preferential treatment"): that preferential treatment is necessary *now* (ie the '60s - whether the 2020s still need it is a separate question) to even out the effects of a history of maltreatment, but the point of doing that is to get us to a place where race *doesn't* matter.
Love this, Zaid, thank you. I try my best to live my life (white guy) the way you reveal Dr. King desired. I grew up from birth to age 8 years on a military post, and my next door neighbor and best friend was black. Our race mattered not one bit to each of us. Too busy riding our big wheels then later, BMX bikes together. Nowadays I play a lot of basketball in my older age and on the court, I am the minority. Race doesn’t matter. It’s mostly social economics that keeps people separated.
Racism began as a psyop and it's still a psyop. The idea of races determined by the melanin content of one's skin did not exist until English aristocrats in Virginia and the Carolinas needed a tool to divide their paid or indentured European laborers from their African slaves.
Amazing what were basically a couple of class-conscious peasant revolts did to the upper class imagination, isn't it? But they created this pre-Madison Avenue sales pitch and it worked brilliantly, with a few problems and adaptations along the way. Absurd adaptations of an absurd premise.
You know as well as MLK did how the definition of "white" changed over time.
There was a time when the Irish were lower on the social scale in some places, like Ohio, than were Blacks. Ironically, the proud Italian-American Greg Bovino from Boston leading ICE's packs of paramilitary thugs is descended from people my ancestors would have disparaged as dirty papist wops. And now he's terrorizing legal immigrants as much or more than his grandpa or great grandpa ever were.
My own great grandfather was a Confederate infantryman from western North Carolina who was probably drafted. He survived the incompetence of Bragg and Hood, worshiped Johnson, was raised as racist as anyone else, and faced Black troops at Bentonville.
They were the best soldiers he ever fought, which meant they were men just like him where it counted--fellow SOLDIERS--with courage and honor. Therefore ALL racism was bullshit. All men were men. That's what the Declaration and Constitution said anyway, wasn't it?
And they were poor men just like him in a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.
What MLK saw was so simple a dirt farmer drafted into the Confederate Army DID see it a century earlier. I do not think it is too much to ask of anyone in 2026.
"I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream—a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality. That is the dream..."
-MLK Jr.,
AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961.
One of my biggest influences in my politics is MLK Jr. The people who push for more racialized thinking disrespect his memory by fighting against the future he worked to create.
Hell yeah
Thank you for this! I'm increasingly an advocate of racial abolition and hadn't realized MLK was in a similar place. It does mesh well with his take on affirmative action ("preferential treatment"): that preferential treatment is necessary *now* (ie the '60s - whether the 2020s still need it is a separate question) to even out the effects of a history of maltreatment, but the point of doing that is to get us to a place where race *doesn't* matter.
Love this, Zaid, thank you. I try my best to live my life (white guy) the way you reveal Dr. King desired. I grew up from birth to age 8 years on a military post, and my next door neighbor and best friend was black. Our race mattered not one bit to each of us. Too busy riding our big wheels then later, BMX bikes together. Nowadays I play a lot of basketball in my older age and on the court, I am the minority. Race doesn’t matter. It’s mostly social economics that keeps people separated.
Racism began as a psyop and it's still a psyop. The idea of races determined by the melanin content of one's skin did not exist until English aristocrats in Virginia and the Carolinas needed a tool to divide their paid or indentured European laborers from their African slaves.
Amazing what were basically a couple of class-conscious peasant revolts did to the upper class imagination, isn't it? But they created this pre-Madison Avenue sales pitch and it worked brilliantly, with a few problems and adaptations along the way. Absurd adaptations of an absurd premise.
You know as well as MLK did how the definition of "white" changed over time.
There was a time when the Irish were lower on the social scale in some places, like Ohio, than were Blacks. Ironically, the proud Italian-American Greg Bovino from Boston leading ICE's packs of paramilitary thugs is descended from people my ancestors would have disparaged as dirty papist wops. And now he's terrorizing legal immigrants as much or more than his grandpa or great grandpa ever were.
My own great grandfather was a Confederate infantryman from western North Carolina who was probably drafted. He survived the incompetence of Bragg and Hood, worshiped Johnson, was raised as racist as anyone else, and faced Black troops at Bentonville.
They were the best soldiers he ever fought, which meant they were men just like him where it counted--fellow SOLDIERS--with courage and honor. Therefore ALL racism was bullshit. All men were men. That's what the Declaration and Constitution said anyway, wasn't it?
And they were poor men just like him in a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.
What MLK saw was so simple a dirt farmer drafted into the Confederate Army DID see it a century earlier. I do not think it is too much to ask of anyone in 2026.
"I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream—a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality. That is the dream..."
-MLK Jr.,
AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961.
One of my biggest influences in my politics is MLK Jr. The people who push for more racialized thinking disrespect his memory by fighting against the future he worked to create.
This author has contempt for Black Americans and our legacy in confronting White racism in America
I recently read his offensive commentary in the NYT it is cringe worthy BS
This author clearly is not a credible source to discuss racism from the perspective of indigenous Black Americans
Clearly not being a Black American is his major shortcoming
So tired of this Non-Black Foreigners making assumptions about MLK ‘s perspectives
Fuck U Zaid
Greg Thrasher
Director
Plane Ideas
Alternative Think Tank
USA
https://planeideas.blogspot.com/?m=1
Would that it were so. Thanks for this.