January 18, 2016 02:15 PM UTC

Co-opting the legacy - The Conservative Disneyfication of Martin Luther King

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• by: PKolbenschlag

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Today is the day we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s life and mission: to challenge oppression, fight for the downtrodden, and call all of us to bold action in fighting injustice.

Although you might not know it from the social media feeds, the creation of this holiday in 1986 was not warmly embraced by American conservatives. In the revision of history Dr. King’s legacy has been watered down and de-radicalized, just as it has been warmly embraced by right-leaning politicians and pundits.

Meanwhile, King’s popular image—transmitted in elementary school lessons for the holiday—has been drained of its radical social critiques and has instead become a generic symbol of equality and kindness to all.

Take the tribute posted by the highly partisan twitter account of Colorado Senate GOP @ColoSenGOP — highlighting the need for equal justice.

And on his Facebook feed Senator Cory Gardner was also quick to appropriate Dr. King’s legacy.

Yes, Dr. King embraced the virtues singled out by Gardner, respect, tolerance, and love. But he was not just an eloquent speaker who mouthed nice words. Dr. King was an activist and he professed the need for radical action and not just happy talk and platitudes.

Unlike the conservatives of his time Dr. King stood for public sector unions, against the war in Vietnam, for racial and economic justice.

As part of his Poor People’s Campaign, Dr. King advocated for a social and economic bill of rights which included a right to a minimum income and universal healthcare coverage.

“Every man, woman and child should be guaranteed adequate healthcare under the social security system.”

Today calls for a higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, and other economic justice reforms are met, often by the same folks ‘honoring’ King’s legacy, with derision and ridicule.

Much as they were in King’s time and in the 1980s when the holiday was being debated:  “Communism,” they call it, “handouts,” and “identity politics.”

Senators Jesse Helms and John Porter East (both North Carolina Republicans) led opposition to the holiday and questioned whether King was important enough to receive such an honor. Helms criticized King’s opposition to the Vietnam War and accused him of espousing “action-oriented Marxism“.^[4] Helms led a filibuster against the bill and on October 3, 1983, submitted a 300-page document to the Senate alleging that King had associations with communists. New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan declared the document a “packet of filth”, threw it on the Senate floor and stomped on it.^[5][6]

President Ronald Reagan originally opposed the holiday, citing cost concerns. When asked to comment on Helms’ accusations that King was a communist, the president said “We’ll know in thirty-five years, won’t we?”

When the holiday was first proposed in legislation in 1979 it passed Congress by 252-133. Of the NAY votes, 101 were Republicans.  Colorado’s delegation of Democrats voted for the holiday, its Republicans did not.

In Colorado the resolution to recognize Martin Luther King’s holiday was introduced by Democrats and signed by Democratic governor Richard Lamm.

Everyone likes a winner, and the sanitized version of Dr. Martin Luther King – loving, tolerant, respectful—makes for a nice story when politicians want to look inclusive without actually challenging fundamental beliefs. But there is very little in Dr. King’s legacy to suggest that his politics and principles aligned with those of the conservatives that are today lauding his legacy. Indeed the policies professed by these latter day King fans are, in many cases, diametrically opposed to what Dr. King worked for and called people to become.

Dr. King is an American icon, and his legacy is complex and not owned by either party or any political persuasion. But that doesn’t mean it is void of meaning and a blank slate to be misappropriated at will, stripped of meaning and rendered into pablum.

And if readers think I am just working to shoehorn King’s legacy into my own liberal agenda, consider this in closing. Dr. King was a supporter of women’s reproductive rights, writing in a letter to Planned Parenthood, that:

“I have always been deeply interested in and sympathetic with the total work of the Planned Parenthood Federation…”

Sen Cory Gardner on the other hand, not so much, explaining his recent vote to defund this organization that primarily serves lower income women.

 “This bill would redirect funding for women’s healthcare away from the scandal-plagued Planned Parenthood and towards responsible community health clinics that operate without a political agenda,” he said in response.

Vacuous Facebook posts are ubiquitous, of course. But reality still matters. King talked about the need to recognize all humanity as one, not divided.

With constant fear-mongering about the “others” in our midst–immigrants, refugees, federal prisoners, gay nuptials, environmentalists, OBAMA!!!–today’s conservatives seem to have missed what Dr. King was saying to us. The substance of his message was about economic justice, peace, and racial equality. His call to us was to fight for these things.

And King’s appellations are just as relevant today. They were not a call for platitudes but for radical and, yes, disruptive action.