We celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. this past week.
No one can be certain what his thoughts about today’s America would be, but there is a compelling case his legacy of reconciliation is being overturned by the woke Left.
Clarence Jones, his former speechwriter, helped compose MLK’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in which he hoped his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” The radical forces behind critical race theory and the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) movement have tried to shred this vision.
In an interview with the Free Press, the 93-year-old Jones mourns:
“Some very important parts of his message are not being remembered,” referring to King’s belief in “radical nonviolence” and his eagerness to build allies across racial and ethnic lines.
He has a new book out on the making and meaning behind King’s famous speech.
He passionately disagrees with the prominent black thinker Ibram X. Kendi, who believes America is irredeemably racist. On foreign policy, he says:
It pains me today when I hear so-called radical blacks criticizing Israel for getting rid of Hamas. So I say to them, what do you expect them to do?
King’s original message seems to be lost on current social-justice warriors, Jones believes. He’s also been fighting ethnic-studies curriculum in California public schools in California, writing Governor Gavin Newsom that the proposed curriculum excluded “the intellectual and moral basis for radical nonviolence advocated by Dr. King.”
Jones admits to ambivalence about affirmative action, which he says did work “to truly give black people equal access.”
But nearly 60 years after the Civil Rights Act, even Jones seems to recognize the inevitability of last year’s Supreme Court’s decision to limit racial preferences in higher education: “You had to stop the escalator somewhere.”