Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Dr. King, why are you high fiving that "racist"?


"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition..."


Sorry Dr. King, one hundred and forty seven years later we must face the tragic fact that the Negro might be free, but some folks are not happy that he has his freedom. In fact, some Negroes don't want to be free. Some Negroes are still "crippled by the manacles" of their own ignorance. They are emancipated in body only, their minds are still not free.

On the very place where you gave that speech some forty seven years ago, a man will be coming with a very different agenda, and a very different view of A-merry-ca. He will bring a lot of friends with him, [including some Negroes] and, sadly, they will all be in the same state of mind.

"Since Beck first announced the event, much critical attention has been paid to the date. This Saturday is the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech," a landmark event in the history of the civil rights movement that is also enshrined in the national mythology as one of the finest expressions of American ideals. Beck claims that the scheduling is mere coincidence. But he has eagerly claimed King's legacy, and the meaning of Aug. 28, as his own.

On the May 24 edition of his radio program, he described himself and his conservative-activist legions as "the inheritors and the protectors of the civil rights movement;" liberals, he claimed, "are perverting it." He said he "wouldn't be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn't be surprised if some of us go to jail -- just like Martin Luther King did -- on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming." Two days later, he reiterated his intent to "reclaim the civil rights movement," since "we were the people that did it in the first place." More recently, he has described the alleged scheduling coincidence as "divine providence"--as God's way of telling Beck he walks in King's footsteps.

If this is true, and a supreme being did in fact decide that Beck should hold his self-branded Tea Party rally in the shadow of Martin Luther King, then we should take this as proof that God has a very dark sense of humor.

Far from being a civil rights icon, Glenn Beck has built his empire and fame in part by being a master divider along racial lines. Especially since the inauguration of Barack Obama on the eve of his Fox News debut, Beck has emerged as the media's boldest manipulator of white racial anxieties, fears and prejudice. His willingness "to go there" has even earned him grudging respect from hardcore white nationalists who usually have little patience for major media.

Most people are aware by now that more than 100 sponsors have fled Beck's program since his June 2009 claim that President Obama was a racist "with a deep-seated hatred of white people." But this is only the best known event in a 30-year career in broadcasting that has been partly defined by racist humor, racially charged venom, and advocacy for far-right foes of the civil rights movement.

Throughout his career in Top 40 radio, Beck was known for his imitations of "black guy" characters and racist tropes. According to Beck's former colleagues in the late 90s, this included mocking unarmed blacks shot and killed by white police officers. Such was the case of Malik Jones, the victim of a controversial killing that took place in 1997.

"After the shooting, Beck sometimes did a racist shtick," remembers Paul Bass, a former radio host and Beck colleague at a Clear Channel station cluster in New Haven. "Glenn did routines about Jones' grandmother being on crack. Generally he made fun of his family and the loss of life--as joke routines."

Beck's racially tinged tirades did not disappear after he switched formats in 1999. During his first talk radio stint in Tampa, he often referred to the Rev. Jesse Jackson as "the stinking king of the race lords." Most recently, Beck has worked to resuscitate the names of famously anti-civil rights figures from the history of his adopted Mormon faith. He has respectfully played tapes of Ezra Taft Benson, who thought Martin Luther King was a communist agent out to destroy the Mormon Church (and who once wrote the foreward [sp] to a book of race hate whose cover illustration featured the severed, bloody head of an African American).

Beck has also implored his viewers to read the "divinely inspired" books of W. Cleon Skousen, another John Birch Society fantasist who believed that the civil rights movement was part of a worldwide Communist (and, later, "New World Order") conspiracy..."
[Link]

Dr. King, I don't think this guy shares your vision. You poor man; I just wish that you could rest in peace. All that turning in your grave must be making it hard for you to have another dream.

214 comments:

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Anonymous said...

What up Field I tried to leave a comment but nothing happened. I see you are moderating the blog. I don't think I said anything out of pocket lol

facingreality said...

OMG Field - You nailed it!

facingreality said...

@A Banks - It really is time out for the blame game. Your conversations veer toward self-hatred and hinders your acceptance that DNA says we are Definitely Not Alike, so then we must reach a level of agreeing to disagree - respectfully.

It is not necessary to be ignorant - loud - arrogant - nor abusive just because one thinks differently. King would have respected the fact that Obama at the very least has accomplished a piece of his dream. He would build him up instead of tearing him down, and he would use him as an example of what peaceable conversations can attain.

Black people are the only race that will get theirs and not reach back. Instead we do everything we can to tear a successful brother/sister down if nothing more than with mean-spirited conversations! Very public and mean-spirited conversations.

Free At Last - No Never for Black people like you are brain-damaged into believing that you could never be free. That would mean that you'd have to take responsibility for your hateful actions and right now its just to easy to play the blame game.

Obama 2012!

Anonymous said...

AB-

All long as MLK was talking about INTEGRATION- which has been nothing BUT detrimental to Black folks- he was allowed to live. Why not gain access, improve, andstrengthen the conditions of Black communities? Rather than to integrate and destroy the Black communities that used to have the Black professionals, businesses and schools IN THEM? To his credit, he did acknowledge that he was integrating Black folks into a burning house. Black folks are completely dependent upon others at this point.

Uniting poor folks of ALL colors= death.

You are telling the TRUTH about Obama. I called it BEFORE he was POTUS. After his "speech" I was hip. When I compared and contrasted it to another POTUS candidate, Cyntiha McKinney, I immediately began to tell the happy negroes that they needed to start acquiring a taste for dog food, because THAT could be all they could afford by the time the eloquent blackish guy was done. LOL!

alicia banks said...

HOBAMA = WARS/POVERTY/AFRICOM

MLK= PEACE/ECONOMIC JUSTICE/HUMANITARIANISM

mlk down with hobama???
never!!!!!

"The dispossessed of this nation -- the poor, both white and Negro -- live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty.

It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.


Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal opposition to poverty, racism and militarism.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast between poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."


mllk

Sandy Gholston said...

Dr. King would swell with pride to see what President Obama has been able to accomplish. I think the president would be thrilled to see how this country was able to rally so many people of all races together in the belief that a black man could become president of the United States.

Anonymous said...

"hobama = legendary creator of war and poverty"

WTF?

Which war did President Obama create (especially as U.S. troops clear out of Iraq)?

How do you become a "legendary creator of war and poverty in three years?" That would be laughable if it weren't so incomprehensibly stupid. I am pretty sure both were going on before he took the oath of office.

Anonymous said...

Maria said:

"she's the laziest, most uncreative and inarticulate debater i have ever met."

and

"nope, instead, she reverses the conversation, diverts to her own position and then reverts to her juvenille and predictable personal attacks because she knows she's lost if she ever tried to debate on topic."


THAT is called PROJECTION.

YOU are an idiot and ONLY you don't realize it. The fact that you are looking to the other resident idiot UTS for support only further reinforces this truth. LOL!

Anonymous said...

"Anybody seen FP recently?"

YOU are SO obsessed you see FP everywhere. LOL!

What gives uts?

Are the knots, the truth left, on that empty head of yours still hurting? LOL! Man up sugarbritches, you gone be alright. Sometimes the truth hurts.

Anonymous said...

AB-

May God bless you for dealing with the lewd, rude, crude, unglued posse. They provide no support for their assertions and can only behave in an uncivilized manner.

Girl, I feel tired FOR you! I understand the passion behind your posts though. I don't bother anymore. I told folks BEFORE he was elected what they could expect. The fact that his dud books were dusted off, repackaged as "best sellers" and he never quite got around to saying anything in all his rosy words. The trailer was plenty for me. I really didn't need to witness the horror movie that now unfolds.

alicia banks said...

sg:

which would make mlk swell with more pride:

the droves of rainbow people at soup kitchens?

or

the droves of rainbow people at homeless shelters?

or

the droves of rainbow people at job fairs/food stamp offices/unemployment ofcs etc?

???

Sandy Gholston said...

uptownsteve

Yes, MLK would be on the president about the plight of the poor in this country. And he should be and we all should be. I totally agree.

Sandy Gholston said...

sg:

which would make mlk swell with more pride:

the droves of rainbow people at soup kitchens?

or

the droves of rainbow people at homeless shelters?

or

the droves of rainbow people at job fairs/food stamp offices/unemployment ofcs etc?

???

This really doesn't make any sense unless none of this existed before January 2009. It's silly to even ask such questions. Most people want to deal with these issues, but there is disagreement on how it should be done. Dr. King was a man who understood that we keep working hard to make things happen even if they don't happen at the snap of the fingers. It's a good thing Dr. King didn't just quit and start name calling after 18 months. Where would we be today? We would not be as far as we are today if Dr. King had quit and just started badmouthing people.

Inspector Clouseau said...

What do you make of the recently disclosed story about the highly-regarded civil rights photographer, who was with Dr. King on the day that he was shot, and who was an informant providing information to the FBI regarding Dr. King and other civil rights activists?

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