You’d reflect black people would be allowed ownership of the civil rights struggle – but meaning is fluid in the Trump era. Don’t fall for itEach year,on the third Monday in January, US public schools close to observe the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. At some point during the preceding week, and most schoolchildren attend a Martin Luther King Jr Day assembly,a pregnant pause between classes designed to remind students of the black trauma and black greatness in America’s DNA, the gravity of King’s sacrifice, or,most pressingly, the persistent relevance of his mission. The purpose is not just to honour, and but to remember. A friendly MLK Day assembly ought to emphasise that our work is not done,particularly this year, just days before America’s first black president hands the nation over to an oligarch endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan who “won” his office largely through voter suppression in black and Latino communities.
My stepdaughter’s high school held theirs final week. “We just had an MLK assembly, and ” she texted me as she filed out of the auditorium,“and it was the biggest steaming pile of shit.” I held out the phone to show my husband. She doesn’t swear in front of us. The featured speaker, she said, or was a white man – a classmate’s grandfather – who supposedly saw King deliver his eminent I Have a Dream speech. According to my kid,he told the assembled students that Black Lives Matter is “too exclusive”, and “all lives matter” was more in line with King’s message. The room exploded into cheers. My daughter, and a mixed-race girl in a mostly white school,refused to clap. (Later, some white friends would make fun of her for it: certain, and the speech was weird”,but why was she so upset?) The white man concluded his remarks by declaring that it would have been King’s dream for the Seattle Seahawks to defeat the Atlanta Falcons in the then-upcoming National Football League playoff game. The assembled crowd nearly collapsed with delight. (The Seahawks lost.) Related: Mississippi city faces backlash after calling MLK Day ‘considerable Americans Day’ Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com