On False Cries for Civility and Salty White Tears

History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes. Here's some of the actual words written to MLK, Jr. by white clergymen--to which he responded in his legendary "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

"We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely."

"We agree rather with certain local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation of racial issues in our area. And we believe this kind of facing of issues can best be accomplished by citizens of our own metropolitan area, white and Negro, meeting with their knowledge and experience of the local situation. All of us need to face that responsibility and find proper channels for its accomplishment."

" Just as we formerly pointed out that 'hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions,' we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham."

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The "extreme measures" they discuss are things like the bus boycott and the marches--the things that ultimately worked. They use false equivalence (of protest marches with calls to violence, for example) and a false binary (either protest OR negotiate). They were complaining about how awful and mean it was to face street protests, grassroots mobilization, marches, and other forms of public pressure to undo segregation. They were calling for people to just be quiet and patient and wait for the nice white supremacists to come around to reason. They were complicit, collaborationist fools.

The same idiocy rules today, in all this hand wringing about civility. Don't be a fool, don't be a tool of injustice, don't be a cowardly white supremacist hiding behind a mask of civility. All day every day, name and shame racists and those who enable them. Make their lives harder, without putting yourself at risk more than you can bear in your relative positions of privilege. CALL OUT THEIR LIES AND CORRUPTION AND INHUMANITY.

The original letter, and King's response, can be found under one cover here.

The Root's headline today has it right: There's Nothing Wrong With Treating an Asshole Like an Asshole. You have the moral imperative to speak truth to the powerful, or those who work to enable the horrors committed by those with power to actualize their dark, eliminationist fantasies of absolute supremacy. If we continue to make them accountable in public, make them pariah in society, make them own the full moral weight of the regime they are helping to support, at least a few will stop even if only so they can eat in restaurants again.

Until it stops, until families are reunited and marginalized people don't have to live continually looking over their shoulders in defense against a regime bent on their suffering, don't let up. Silence is complicity.