How not to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.
Every Martin Luther King Jr. Day should arrive with this disclaimer — a 2021 tweet posted by Bernice King on what would have been her father’s 92nd birthday: “Dear politicians/political influencers: When you tweet about my father’s birthday, remember that he was resolute about eradicating racism, poverty & militarism,” she wrote. “Encourage and enact policies that reflect his teachings.”
Instead, the full measure of the man and his unfinished mission will be boiled down to a few out-of-context lines from his most famous speech and empty praise from Republicans who encourage and enact policies that are the exact opposite of King’s teachings.
From their official Twitter account last year, House Republicans claimed they honored “Dr. King’s life and unending legacy by striving to uphold the values he courageously fought for.” Of course, they do no such thing.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas praised the “power” of King’s words in “calling on all of us to have ‘the courage to face the uncertainties of the future . . . as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom.’” That was in 2021, two weeks after Cruz’s insurrectionist vote to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia, King’s home state, also voted against certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and compared the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection to a “normal tourist visit.” Last year, he tweeted, “Today we honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a heroic leader and Civil Rights icon who fought to secure justice and equality for all Americans.”
It’s like a bizarre race to see who can work the hardest to say the most on social media while using their legislative powers to do the absolute least. Republicans oppose protecting voting rights that King marched to secure more than 60 years ago. They deride measures like student loan debt relief to shrink this nation’s racial wealth gap. The last great cause of King’s life was fighting poverty, a “transcendent issue,” as author Joseph Rosenbloom called it in his 2018 book,
“Redemption: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Last 31 Hours.”
Republicans parrot his words but ignore King’s challenge to this nation to live up to its values and promises. Instead, they offer hollow gestures designed for — well, whom, exactly? Certainly not their base, many of whom still consider King enough of a threat that there have been attempts to ban his “I Have a Dream” speech from school curricula and remove books about him from school libraries. Republicans consider critical race theory — unfiltered American history — to be a more dangerous plague than COVID-19.
Alabama and Mississippi even designate the third Monday in January “KingLee Day” — as in Robert E. Lee, the traitorous Confederate general. King’s birthday is Jan. 15; Lee’s is Jan. 19. Don’t count on any Republicans to denounce the unholy pairing of a civil rights icon with a man who waged a seditious civil war against the US government to preserve and expand slavery.
In front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, King called the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” But this nation “defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.”
Republicans use MLK Day to write bad checks on social media. It’s a yearly tithe without value, except perhaps as a hedge against accusations of racism or promoting racist policies.
Nearly 40 years after Ronald Reagan, who originally opposed the holiday, finally signed it into law, MLK Day has become many things, including a National Day of Service, designated in 2013 by then-president Barack Obama. For Republicans, it’s a time to neuter King’s dream, even going so far as to recast him as some kind of latter-day conservative hero.
One of this nation’s great revolutionaries cannot be reduced to morsels fit for refrigerator magnets while Republicans cosplay as social justice warriors for a day. They should keep his name out of their mouths and tweets. One way to honor King is to avoid giving oxygen to anything the hypocrites and liars have to say on his day — and that goes triple for the mendacious Republican freshman from New York, Representative George Santos.