Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a day that often brings up a lot of discussions about what the country looked like back during King’s life and what it looks like now regarding race relations.
While we have made great strides over the last few decades, in many ways America is more divided than we have ever been.
A big reason for that has been the violent and irresponsible actions coming from the far left like the Black Lives Matter movement and race baiters like Al Sharpton.
Martin Luther King Jr’s son, Martin Luther King III, has some words for those people who think that his father would have condoned violence to make a point.
From Washington Times:
On the holiday commemorating his father’s epic civil rights legacy, Martin Luther King III says he is dismayed by recent violence against police, the destructive protests in Ferguson and the trashing of a U.Va. fraternity falsely accused of sexual assault because they don’t reflect his father’s own approach to advocate for change peacefully.
“My father’s approach to the most brutal and unambiguous social injustices during the civil rights struggle was rooted in nonviolence as a morally and tactically correct response,” Mr. King said in an interview with The Washington Times. “In no way do I, nor would my father, condone any ‘ends justify the means’ behavior.”
But recent riots in Ferguson, Missouri, the vengeance killing of two police officers in New York and campus violence at the University of Virginia have proved that 47 years after the peace activist was assassinated, his message still has not resonated with some.
In late November, undergraduate students at Charlottesville’s University of Virginia resorted to hurling bricks, bottles and concrete blocks through windows at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity residence after Rolling Stone magazine recklessly accused the house of orchestrating a brutal gang rape. Profane, anti-male epithets were spray-painted across the fraternity’s Colonial brick exterior, and threats of continued violence were levied against university administrators.
In December, the U.Va. student who led the Phi Kappa Psi attack spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity, saying he was inspired by “the black leaders in Ferguson,” and that their violent attack was warranted because “the ends justified the means.”
Martin Luther King III was one of those leaders. He traveled to Missouri to attend Michael Brown’s funeral in August.
But when The Times told Mr. King about the student’s comments, he said that using violence to correct perceived social injustices was “socially destructive” and “self-defeating.”
Mr. King said his father “pointed out in a very real sense that such [violent] acts may be considered the language of the unheard.”
As an alternative remedy, Mr. King said, communication and dialogue were key.
“I would say to these young people, you are not unheard. Your disillusionment deserves to be addressed inside and outside theuniversity through cross-cultural dialogue, which should include a greater understanding of oppression,” he said. “Only then can your anger be
positively redirected through the time-honored process of nonviolence my father utilized to obtain his greatest moral victories in seeking justice and fairness for all.”
Much like his father, Mr. King has long been an advocate of communication between rival political organizations and movements.
On May 9, Mr. King shocked an MSNBC host during an interview when he suggested that liberal and left-leaning blacks reach out to members of the tea party as a means of understanding each other.
Awesome message from MLK III and it is nice to see that many members of the black community, including prominent ones like him, are advocating for a dialogue instead of marching down the street talking about frying the pigs (cops) like bacon.
We all can learn a lot from Martin Luther King Jr. and hopefully we can start toning down some of this ugly racial rhetoric and actually start working on these deep seeded issues as a community.
