The “Whitewashing” of Martin Luther King Jr.

Around the time of, and during the subsequent aftermath of various BLM protests, the flooding of MLK quotes began to reappear by the thousands in well-intentioned Instagrammers, Facebookers, and Twitter users. Mostly, they bang on the hits, the softer, more palatable to white folks’ quotes — the warm, loving inspiring kind. In fact, many of these very same posts were posted by white people. And so, it is predictable for their MLK echoes to be met with “Whitewash!”.

And one can see where they might be coming from — the crowd who wants to protect the true legacy of Dr. King, the fiery, more confrontational, finger-pointing King. And while it is true, not everything Dr. King said was of the folksy inspired kind — he had anger, rage, and resentment, too, although we hear less of that Dr. King, nowadays. And so, it is then said that he has been not quoted fully, not seen in his true historical context. And still, I call the whole “whitewashing of Dr. King” a farce.

Of all historical giants, good and evil, we rarely remember them in the purest, authentic forms of themselves. We can only keep alive a few utterances, a few of their wise or despicable words.

Of historical giants — let's think, Einstein, Shakespeare, Martin Luther King. Let's think of Gandhi, Michael Jordan, Amelia Erhardt, even Josef Stalin, and Abraham Lincoln, too. You may have a quote or two, or maybe three from each of these great figures, but you probably won’t recall much more than that. Time does this. Time tends to crystallize figures to their bare essence for us, and tends to simplify the figures into their purest forms, their most utterable, repeatable truths.

Conversely, the more radical approach of Malcolm X seems to stick- however, what gets lost is Malcolm X did in fact walk back and even apologize for some of his more militant stances and statements (i.e., “white people are the devil” was specifically recanted). It seems the complexity of nuance often gets lost with great thought leaders.

Of course, Martin Luther King Jr is no different. And if you post an MLK quote of the warmer content-of-your-heart-type, you'll be accused of cherry-picking. But of course, to quote someone at all is cherry-picking, that's what a quote is. What is more disingenuous about the criticizing of those who quote MLK casually is that society at large has lauded Dr. King unanimously as a great leader for half a century, and anybody using one of his quotes was at least considered to be in the moral right, broadly speaking.

But Dr. King's message, at its purest intent, is not problematized by its quoters, but often problematized by the new antiracists' dictum of seeing race everywhere, seeing racism in all things. One cannot simply evaluate the content of a person's heart in the woke mindset, without first unpacking all the historical injustices based on the group association of that person's skin color, sexual preference, religion, etc.

So, the answer, it seems, is to cut down any MLK quote with swift ferocity. For some, it is not that they want Dr. King to be quoted more accurately, but that Dr. King himself was not militant enough to begin with. The whole “love your neighbor” bit from MLK is just too soft for the new anti-racist bunch. Anti-racism, the woke, and Antifa, all employ tactics (strategic and rhetorically strategic) that are much too militant, much too aggressive, and much too dialectically opposed to Dr. King's message.

A society remembers individuals for either what they did for that society, or what they did to that society. Broadly speaking, Dr. King did choose to voice criticisms that always felt backed by a type of love and with the understood intention that the improvement of the human condition was the spirit with which he spoke. He chose to insist on non-violence. He chose to speak to commonality and common

dignity. This is summed up in many of the quotes you see paraded on Instagram — and yes, many times by thoughtless folks who may simply be signaling that generally speaking, they are on the right side of things.

I don't think Martin Luther King Jr. has been whitewashed. His fiery labor party initiatives and Vietnam criticisms, while valid and confrontational, are not as relevant as the “I have a dream” tone. America remembers Dr. King for what he did for America, and his insistence on seeing the character of the heart and not the color of the skin was his greatest contribution to it.

JSV
2023