The Legacy of Truth to Power in 2022

 

                                                                            Nikole Hannah-Jones

Today's blog is a follow-up to Monday's entry about the misuse and sanitization of the radical message of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King was steadfast in choosing a non-violent response to racism but he was not passive in word or deed when it came to challenging systemic racism. 

On Monday Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones spoke at an exclusive club in Chicago even though some members had protested her presence because of her work on the 1619 Project. This journalistic enterprise developed by the New York Times  "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States' national narrative."

Hannah-Jones rewrote her speech using Dr. King's words for the first half without telling her audience of mostly white members. Wherever King had used the word "negro" she substituted "black" so that her clever ploy would not be readily evident. It became clear as she progressed that those who were listening were increasingly uncomfortable with the rhetoric which had come from the mouth and pen of the man they were there to honour. Only after she had created this discomfort did she reveal what she had done. 

Hannah-Jones went on to say that King, who was killed in 1968, wasn’t widely revered as the leader people know today, but was depicted as a “charlatan,” “demagogue” and “traitor.” As I said on Monday, polls from shortly before Dr. King's assassination indicated that he was the most hated person in America, and if he were around today many of the right-wingers who cherry-pick some of his phrases to dismiss Black Lives Matter and discussions of Critical Race Theory would despise him as well.

King, the Baptist pastor, was a follower of Jesus and as such he was non-violent, but he spoke truth to power. There were reasons that both were assassinated in the prime of their lives, and we can't forget this. 

In today's Groundling blog I delight in the Songs of the Stars -- take a look, please!

https://groundlingearthyheavenly.blogspot.com/2022/01/delight-in-song-of-stars.html