Say Anything Blog

If Martin Luther King could come back for just one day, today, to talk to some of the leadership of black America I think he would be appalled at what he saw.

Despite all the bluster, despite the heated and sometimes re-heated rhetoric that is shouted from the rooftops on a daily basis from the self-proclaimed “leaders” of the black communities of America, not a single one of those pretenders to the status of Dr. King even comes close to delivering what he envisioned for the future of black Americans.

I think Dr. King would find himself in the equivalent of a fun-house hall of mirrors where he would see those who think they are reflections of him and his legacy as twisted, distorted, and warped images of the real thing. The Jacksons and the Sharptons and the Jeremiah Wrights and the Louis Farakhans of today – all want us to believe that they are delivering his message when in fact they’re warping it beyond recognition.

There are others as well. “Quannel X”, the spokesman for the New Black Panthers, should make the average black American cringe with embarrassment every time he opens his mouth and spews out his nonsensical, vitriolic, and downright illiterate hatred.  By the way, if I got his name wrong – I don’t really care. I’m not going to bother to Google it. He’s basically black America’s version of a Klan leader. The skin color is different, the message is the same. And yet he’s somehow found a sort of legitimacy that would have Dr. King shaking his head in disgust.

The so called leaders of today preach that being separate from mainstream America is a good thing. That black Americans should get preference in jobs and education because of their skin color. That is the exact opposite of what Dr. King was standing up for – and gave his life for - in a time when racism in America was very real, when exclusion from the American dream was something that black Americans faced every single day of their lives. He wanted black Americans to be included in what happened in everyday America on an equal basis, not separated by their own choice.

That’s what being “equal” means.

It’s a pity that self promoting ideologues like the people I mentioned above have taken what King’s message truly was – inclusion, equality, and opportunity – and changed it to a self perpetuating mantra of victimhood.

If King could come back today I think he’d be staggered by what he saw in today’s black leadership – a gallery of race baiting self promoters who manage to marginalize any of the other leaders who genuinely want their people to live up to his dream of self reliance and personal responsibility, of genuine equality and equal opportunity.

They want us to believe that they are his reflections. And maybe they are, but only in the way a carnival hall of mirrors twists and distorts the image that looks back at you.

Dr. King, I suspect, wouldn’t care for the images that would look back at him.