‘Racism is like rape. The victims are not the ones you need to tell how to avoid it, the perpetrators are the ones you need to talk to. I will repeat for the thousandth time, nothing black people do, have done, will do, can do, say, can say, will say, causes racism.’
I knew when your recent guest column, supposedly written by a humanitarian, started out with a quote from Dr. King’s famous speech that it was going to be bad.
A lot of white people have decided that Dr. King was a safe, good black man and that they can espouse his philosophies and use his words to let the bad blacks who are acting up know that they are not prejudiced, they just cannot approve of black people who do not behave. These misguided people do not know the real Dr. King and they do not understand that using the perceived misbehavior of a small group of people to chastise an entire race is white supremacy thinking.
The author of the piece erroneously claims that Dr. King did not point fingers at others but wanted us to look within. What she does not understand or purposefully misinterprets is that Dr. King was not asking for black people to just suck it up and become better people and then the white folks would stop hitting them with clubs, turning dogs on them and burying them in dams in Mississippi, or shooting them in Walmarts, or denying them jobs or refusing them a decent education.
Dr. King was not naive. He appealed to, or tried to, the conscience of the racists, but he also held them to account. Some folks just love a dead black leader whose words they can misconstrue and twist to fit their own racist philosophies.
The tone of this piece was that if everyone would just be of good character there would be no more problems. This is a version of “If you black people would just behave and be docile and quiet and accept white supremacy, all would be peaceful.”
Racism is like rape. The victims are not the ones you need to tell how to avoid it, the perpetrators are the ones you need to talk to. I will repeat for the thousandth time, nothing black people do, have done, will do, can do, say, can say, will say, causes racism. Racists are not rational, their biases and bigotry are based on their own created fantasies, and the answer to racism and discrimination is not as you so naively claim, character. Your champion, Dr King, had great character according to you, how did that work out for him?
Since you chose to quote Dr. King’s speech, a signal flare that you really do not understand racism, I will end my letter with a more appropriate quote for you. “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” — Dr. Martin Luther King.
Melva E. Newsom, Ph.D., is the retired director of Diversity Education and Assessment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is presently adjunct professor of education at Central State University.
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