”One day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the oil?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the iron ore?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?’ These are questions that must be asked.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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And this is what really got Dr. MLK killed. (via black-culture)
This is the kind of thing that we get taught a lot in progressive circles. We hear that Dr. King was assassinated not because of his liberal-pacifist-[sic] views on racial equality [sic], but because of his truly threatening socialistic politics. And it’s not untrue, and it is these things (the interrelationship between racism, war, and poverty) that are the most erased from our MLK narratives even though they’re the most important. We don’t talk about how he was in Memphis to work with the sanitation strikers, that’s for sure.
But saying that he really got killed because of his views on distribution of wealth and not, you know, racism, is reductive. It’s like a progressive take on the But The Civil War Wasn’t About Slavery It Was About Economics! bullshit. Is it really that hard to imagine that MLK was assassinated, yes, because he was challenging capitalism but also because of, um, you know, racism? Because he was challenging how capitalism both relies on and props up white supremacy? Can we have a discussion about Dr. King’s views on poverty which doesn’t completely erase the fact that he was still talking about race? I think deracializing his socialist discourse is as damaging (and racist!) as whitewashing/decontextualizing his antiracist discourse.
tl;dr, what about the poor white people??
(*less a comment on the original poster, because the post made more sense in the context of their blog. more a comment re: every white history professor we’ve all ever had and the giddiness with which white-centric feminist/sj blogs have been saying this same thing all day.)
(I mean, it’s not like the government assassinated Dorothy Day, and what she did wasn’t that much different in terms of class from what Fred Hampton was doing)
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