February 09, 2022 12:30 PM UTC

Of Course Lori Saine Misunderstands MLK

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado Times Recorder reports on a story that should surprise absolutely no-one who is at all familiar with Weld County Commissioner and Congressional candidate Lori Saine:

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Jan. 17, Saine – who is running for the U.S. House of Representatives – posted a meme on Facebook featuring a photo of King and an excerpt from his famous “I Have a Dream” speech: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

At the bottom is a caption saying “Time for America to live the dream. End CRT now!”.

Saine is not the first GOP politician to attempt to use King’s words to justify her stance. In July 2021, U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) came under fire for saying that CRT “goes against everything Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us” and cited the same King quote that Saine recently shared to call for an end to CRT. These critics seem to be arguing that CRT implies “judging people by the color of their skin.”

According to reporting from The Hill, King’s own daughter, Bernice King, spoke out after McCarthy’s statement, saying it was “beyond insulting” for GOP officials to “misappropriate” her father’s teachings in such a way. Numerous Black journalists have written about how, if King were still alive today, he would almost certainly support a concept like CRT.

You may recall that Saine made national headlines in January 2019 while serving as a State Representative when she took to the floor of the House of Representatives and told everyone that white people “were lynched in nearly equal numbers” as black people following Reconstruction. Here’s the full quote from Saine’s 2019 MLK-day speech:

Colleagues, we are standing in the moral arc of history today as we celebrate a reverend who changed history for all Americans. We have come a long way on that arc since the reconstruction, when whites and blacks alike were in nearly equal numbers lynched for the crime of being Republican. [Pols emphasis]

Suggesting that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would oppose Critical Race Theory isn’t as bad as Saine claiming that white people were lynched in equal number to black people, but Saine should really just stop talking about MLK altogether.