I Have a Dream (1963)

I'm not using anybody as a prop, nor am I ignoring anything. If you want to talk about King's positions regarding socialism, I'll tell you why I disagree with them. If you want to talk about his position regarding color-blindness, I'll tell you why I think it's the single most important notion to arise from the civil rights movement.

This doesn't "prove your point" that I'm somehow erasing the other positions he held or using him as a prop, I simply don't agree with all of his positions. You seem to be of the opinion that there is some sort of contradiction inherent in that, whereas the position of color-blindness actually has nothing to do with socialism. In fact, the most prominent advocates of socialism today specifically advocate AGAINST color-blindness.

> What, so the rest of what he said wasn’t ideas? Or that the rest of them have less value because someone said so? If so, who decides which ideas are the real ones to be remembered? You? Me? Our political chattering classes?

This is an absolutely ridiculous statement. Of course the rest of what he said were ideas, the point is that arguments/positions aren't bundled together arbitrarily simply because you would like them to be. If I say "the sky appears blue, I think it has something to do with the way light is scattered through the atmosphere, and that probably means there is a god," hopefully you understand that I've actually made 3 arguments, 2 of which you might agree with. Agreeing that the sky appears blue doesn't mean you have to agree that there is a god. Regarding which have more or less value...you're free to venerate whichever ideas of Dr. King you'd like to, nobody is stopping you. There is no political chattering classes demanding that you do anything regarding which positions of his you found compelling.

(When I wrote that King had 'no power but a voice', I didn't mean 'no power but oration'; I meant that all King could do was speak to people - individually, in organzing meetings, publicly, etc. - and try to persuade them.)

Since MLK is revered, people will say that his accomplishments were ultimately successful. There are few to none legal discriminations of the races in the US - in fact anti-discrimination is protected. Yet, we realize now, with more decades of research and understanding that ending "systemic" racism isn't as simple as passing a civil rights bill or formalizing the definition of a "hate crime". So it's not that the specific place that King gave a speech is hallowed ground. But rather that his work was ultimately incomplete (at least partially because he was assassinated).

> Re: open debate suppression

The venn diagram between people that are "self censoring" by attempting to boycott say Dave Chapelle, and the people that are attempting (and succeeding) in banning "Critical race theory" has no overlap.

There are two foundational differences.

One:

Those attempting to stifle free speech on campuses by banning what they deem hate speech are using private institutional policies in the open market. There is no law being passed that's preventing Dave Chapelle from doing standup comedy. Just private citizens exercising their own free speech rights and influencing private entities into deeming their free speech more important than Chapelle's.

On the other hand, "critical race theory" bans are sweeping the nation with republican legislatures introducing into LAW the requirement for teachers and librarians to err on the side of the preferences of individual parents rather than educators or academics with regards to what "facts" they teach to students.

Two:

By the paradox of intolerance, tolerance and "tolerance of intolerance" are meaningfully different concepts. While they get categorized as the same by bad faith actors, they actually have opposite goals. Arguably, intolerance of intolerance is itself in the service of tolerance. Likewise, restriction of free speech in the interest of stifling hate speech IS meaningfully different from restriction of free speech in the interest of PROMOTING hate speech. Every other Western/developed country besides the United States believes this. Every country from Germany to the UK to Canada accepts some limitations on the exercise of free speech in the interest of resisting hatred. These are not based on feelings or emotions - they are based on statistics with regards to hate crimes, bullying, suicides amongst marginalized groups, etc.

On the other hand, the bans on critical race theory are based on no data or scientific basis - the very term is completely mis-defined as a niche Graduate-level academic discourse is used to describe absolutely ANY open debate of the past horrors of racism, discrimination, or slavery. The categorization of "critical race theory" as racist against whites, used to bully or discriminate against whites, or any of the sort is not backed in any evidence or research. It's purely an emotional reaction based on how the dominant culture feels about being asked to confront it's past. Which, incidentally, is exactly what Martin Luther King said is necessary even in a peaceful civil rights movement. The very acknowledgement of racist feelings and histories is uncomfortable. And the dominant white judeo-christian protestant conservative culture in the US does not deal well with self-reflection or discomfort, and instead lashes outward. And they have the power to take meaningful action as part of this.

That it is banned in public schools is proof that they do not and cannot define it. CRT is a Graduate-level subject that had no allocated curriculum in elementary or high schools.

Rather, it's being used as a dog whistle for all debate regarding privilege, SYSTEMIC racism, the acknowledgement of US history as racist, or work still to be done today.

The bans of "critical race theory" are not actually banning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory but openly suppressing discussion of civil rights and racism.

"an intellectual and social movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of colour"

Which doesn't sound like an inherently racist ideology to me. I highly suspect quotes like the above are being taken out of context. Unfortunately this statement appears to be pulled from somewhere inside a book on the subject, which I have not yet invested the time to track down let alone read. My assumption would be that, as is true in many such cases, a lot of the terminology is being misrepresented by leaving the reader to assume a colloquial definition of the words rather than the context laid out in the supporting text. Indeed, several articles hint that this is indeed the case:

"Kendi defines racism as “a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities.” Racist inequality exists when “two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing.” Racist policies are any law, rule or regulation that keeps that inequality in place.

The discrimination Kendi is talking about is not the police, politicians or teachers who believe one thing or the other, but policies that are in the system that effectively keep the power to maintain or change that policy primarily in the group that benefits from that discrimination."[0]

[0] https://fredericksburg.com/opinion/letters/letter-crt-necess...

Ok. I guess instead they should suppress that and just act “white” (or whatever the majority race is)?