Some Thoughts on MLK Day

[howeird]

Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot two months before my high school graduation. It was a time of violence, and the assassination of one more household name was not a huge surprise.

I did not particularly like Dr. King. I'm allergic to gospel-spouting, and run screaming when I hear a preacher in full-on African-American mode. It sounds phony to me, rubs me the wrong way. The "I have a dream" speech is a pretty good example of what I am talking about.

YMMV.

Passive resistance is also something I was not all about. The kind of people who would beat the crap out of you because they think you're the wrong color are not going to feel remorse or give a flying fart that you didn't fight back. They will just think you're a pussy. I am convinced it was the number of protests and the number of protesters which had an impact, not their passivity. And in the end it was really JFK, RFK and the National Guard who put America on the path to equality, such as it is.

IMHO a national holiday honoring MLK is not justified. I could go for a Rosa Parks holiday, though.