Acknowledging MLK, Conservatively

JUST FOR FUN, next year on MLk day, since its too late to try the experiment this year, pay attention to conservatives talking about the iconic civil rights leader. Really, any regular old day will do, but there is something special about discussing MLK on MLK day, when the enthusiaism for him is at its one day per year fever pitch. Invariably, conservatives will cite as King's best attribute his alleged emphasis on a "color blind" society; a term which to conservatives really means a "failure to acknowledge the rampant institutional racism with which the United States is afflicted", and a preference for believing that rampant racism ended in american culture when slavery was abolished, and that Martin Luther King's primary achievement and purpose was a sort of "mop up" operation, in eliminating the last, lingering vestige of racism by replacing it with ubiquitous color blindness. What you will never hear a tried and true right winger acknowledge is King's radicalism, that his anti-racist crusade wass not onlly based on the Christian religion in his capacity as a minister, and that by the standards of his times, the nineteen fifties and sixties, he was as radical and controverisal as they come, which is why he was murdered, and why he knew he would be murdered well in advance. King's tolerance and embrace of unconditional love is of course what all Christians should embrace, but which racists, al of which are conservative, since racim is a traditional, core American value, do not. King also, late in life, realized that without economic equality there could never be racial equality, and so he openly espoused socialism, a fact which conservatives can scarcely bring themeslves to accept. In the nineteeen sixties conservatives were still universally racist, as many of them still are today. The difference is, in those days they were unabashed, and today they seem somewhat ashamed of it, and tend to conceal it. Today's conservatives, racist? The white supremacy movement, which has a substantial following, is growing, and is to a person made up of christians and political conservatives. And that's just the tip of the right wing racist iceberg. There isn't a screeching liberal nor black lives matter member to be found among the lot. Color blindness, a noble sounding aspiration, simply doesn't work, for the simple reason that people are not color blind, can easily discern skin pigmentation, and also, because color blindness is merely another means of allowing the free market of values and attitudes to reign unfettered; meaning that one can be as color blind as one wants, but be covertly, if not overtly racist. It is easy for a problem to exist when one simply chooses not to see the problem. A more realsitic approach is mandated by logic. It is this: educate the general population to understand that every living human being has a unique skin color, and that skin color, like most other human traits, is a continuum, a spectrum, along which we all can be placed, ranging from extremely light to extremely dark. Race, in other words, is an arbitrary categorization. Humanity is not divided into three or four races and skin colors, but rather, into an infinite variety of unique individuals. When we discard our categorical thinking and categories, which we create for the sake of convenience, we enter a realm of a much more complicated, confusing world. But if accepting reality for the complexity of unique forms that it is allows us to be more tolerant of everyone and aids us in elimianting an idiotic attitude like racism, then having a better understanding of the universe is not the only benefit we gain from forcing oursleves to do a better job of thinking.