Why Martin Luther King Jr. Would be Ashamed of the Black Lives Matter Movement

The arguments put forward by the Pro show a profound lack of understanding of the history of the civil rights movement, and the Black Lives Matter movement.The pro contends that "Black Lives Matter" segregates black lives from all lives and that the movement only cares about the lives of Black People. This argument however has no bearing. This argument is based on the notion it should truly be "all lives matter", but this argument is a non-sequiter. To quote comedian Felonious Munk ""If I break my leg, I do not want the doctor telling me, 'All legs should be healed.' I want the doctor to fix my leg."To say that black lives matter is exclusionary, and that it should really be "All Lives Matter" is nothing more than a red herring. It is a way of ignoring the issues of race and racism in our society, what some have called "Willful Color Blindness". BLM does not say that Only black lives matter, it is saying in our society, black lives, effectively, do not matter. When you examine the racial divide in the US it becomes abundantly obvious that black lives are not valued like white lives. Affluent black people live in poorer neighborhoods than whites with working class incomes. White people (65% of the US) hold around 88% of the wealth in the US, while black people (13%) hold around 2.5% of the wealth. People with black sounding names are 50% less likely to be called back for a job interview. Black people are twice as likely to be pulled over by the police for minor infractions. While black people and white people do drugs at about the same rate, black people are 4 times more likely to be arrested for drug possession. Black people are incarcerated at 6 times the rate of white people. And unarmed black people are twice as likely to be killed by police than white people. In the words of Dr. King, "All of this reveals to us that we have not achieved the level of brotherhood—we have not achieved the brotherhood that we need and that we must have in our nation. We still have a long, long way to go."http://www.huffingtonpost.com...http://www.huffingtonpost.com...http://www.theguardian.com...The Pro claims the movement has had its message twisted, however this is clearly not the case because BLM has 10 demands that they have released and have consistently been demanding. And thus this claim has not real grounding.http://www.bbc.com...The Pro presents a sanitized version of Dr. King, the version commonly presented in America today. Dr. King did not present himself as a moderate, he was a radical. While Dr. King was committed to non violence, and said "violence begets violence", however when he was asked about the idea of black power he said:I contend that the cry of "black power" is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. King Further said that you cannot look to the oppressor to liberate the oppressed.http://www.cbsnews.com...The history of Malcolm X presented by the Pro is also wholly inaccurate, because early on Malcolm X was a black separatist and a member of the Nation of Islam, a black supremacist group, and highly critical of Martin Luther King Jr. Towards the end of his life he founded Organization for Afro-American Unity and renounced racism in all its forms. The Malcolm and MLK only began to agree with each other in the years before Malcolm’s death, and even proposed joining forces on one occasion, Malcolm’s death prevented this. Before his death Malcolm also accepted that white people should be able to help the black struggle, but that the BLACK struggle must be led by BLACK people. As time went on King began to become more like Malcolm. On a number of occasions in 1967 and 1968, Dr. King was photographed wearing buttons which said "Black is Beautiful", the motto of the Black Nationalist movement. While King did not embrace Black power, he began to embrace the Black liberation movement (not to be confused with the Black Liberation Army, the violent offshoot of the Black Panthers). http://www.cnn.com...The Black Lives Matter movement is much the same way. It is in this way the ideological descendant of both Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. This parrallel is only furthered when we examin Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail".While the Pro contends that Dr. King called for moderation and peace, however this view is what King felt was perhaps the greatest obstacle for the civil rights movement to overcome. In the letter King said: I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.http://www.africa.upenn.edu... The con also highlights the problems within the Black Community itself, his source specifically mention murder rates and black on black crime. This is nothing more than a red herring. By highlighting this issue and focusing solely on this, we ignore the issues at hand. By focusing on this, we allow ourselves to ignore the issues of systemic racism, police brutality, mass incarceration, police militarization, racial profiling, and white privilege. It also must be said that we have only taken notice of the issue of crime in black communities when it serves as a distraction from these issues I listed above, yet on almost every other day of the year we brush this issue under the rug.When we look to Dr King's words yet again, we find that Dr. King would not agree with what the Pro has stated. In a recently discovered speech Dr. King gave in London, just before he recieved the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King remarked that the problems of crime are actually the results of racist society we live in.Those people who argue against integration at this point often say, "Well, if you integrate the public schools, for instance, you will pull the white race back a generation." And they like to talk about the cultural lag in the Negro community. And then they go on to say, "Now, you know, the Negro is a criminal, and he has the highest crime rate in any city that you can find in the United States." And the arguments go on ad infinitum why integration shouldn’t come into being.But I think there’s an answer to that, and that is that if there is cultural lag in the Negro community—and there certainly is—this lag is there because of segregation and discrimination. It’s there because of long years of slavery and segregation. Criminal responses are not racial, but environmental. Poverty, economic deprivation, social isolation and all of these things breed crime, whatever the racial group may be. And it is a torturous logic to use the tragic results of racial segregation as an argument for the continuation of it. It is necessary to go back. And so it is necessary to see this and to go all out to make economic justice a reality all over our nation. While the official legal segregation may have gone away, institutional racism still exists and the issues that King addresses are the same today as they were 50 years ago.http://www.usnews.com...The original recording full text of the speech can found here.http://www.democracynow.org...