Beck has repeatedly claimed that MLK did NOT advocate social justice and I noted
last August that Beck is wrong about this. A recent symposium on King reinforces this point:
King's social justice views often glossed over, experts say
By William Douglas | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, January 20, 2011
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A symposium this week at the University of Virginia on the private writings and conversations of Martin Luther King Jr. turned into a pointed debate on the image of the slain civil rights leader conveyed during his January holiday.
Glossed over and rarely discussed, they say, are King's controversial economic philosophy of social justice and his strong stance against the Vietnam War...
His economic views in the three years prior to his assassination on April 4, 1968, stirred controversy and criticism from those who felt he was straying from his lane as a civil rights leader and challenging the foundation of capitalism.
"One day we must ask the question 'Why are there forty million poor people here in America,'" King said in a 1967 address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. "And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society."
UPDATE:
Roy Edroso found a better excerpt from King's
8/31/1967 speech to the National Conference for a New Politics:
. . . [W]e have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black andwhite, both here and abroad. . . . The way to end poverty is to end the exploitation of the poor. Insure them a fair share of the government's services and the nation's resources.
. . . [W]e must recognize that the problems of neither racial nor economic justice can be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power. . . . (King, 1967b:1 7-19)
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2 comments:
Bill Cunningham has repeatedly said MLK dis not approve of hiring and admission quotas for that would have been a violation of
"judge a man by the content of his character not the coklor of his skin." Of course Cunningham is wrong yet again.
Billy is even worse than Hannity. BTW, have you heard any more about his TV show?
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