After reading Cecil’s eye opener on MLK Jr’s behind the scenes activities, I wonder if a modern day MLK Jr type figure would hold up under today’s scrutiny and politically survive long enough to be relevant in the media.
Have we in fact already disregarded an MLK type transformative figure because of bad behavior - or has there just been no one serious enough to fill his vacancy? (Maybe Im just forgetting there is someone like this because they’re not front and center in the media right now?)
Everything is different. What kind of figure would he be to the black community? Would he call them on their faults or blame it on Everyone Else?
I’m inclined to think the former. If so, the world would be more forgiving of his past indiscretions.
imo of course.
IMO MLK was one of—if not the most----important US figure in the second half of the twentieth century. It would be hard to overstate his contribution, and his death was a great loss for everyone in this country.
Part of our loss is the mindset that we still need a “trans-formative figure.”
Racism is a part of the human experience, and has been since the beginning. Nonetheless, MLK’s (and millions of others) contribution laid the groundwork for the society we now live in.
Is the work done? No, but the fact is the work will never be done.
But the war is over. The good guys won.
I’d guess that he’d (still) be a compelling public speaker, and even in this cynical hip-ironic age, that buys you a lot of forgiveness.
If he doesn’t get assassinated, though, his biggest enemy will be gradual irrelevance, much like Jesse Jackson.
ETA
To reiterate, we don’t need a trans-formative figure ala MLK.
It depends on how you define “survive.”
Herman Cain couldn’t run from his sordid past. Going back to Gary Hart (remember him?) our society and media (and TMZ like paparazzi) have been progressively more unrelenting, and invasive.
But occasionally more forgiving. For every Rep Wiener there’s a Barney Frank.
So occasionally a figure rises like a Phoenix, like Clinton or Eliot Spitzer. Even Jesse Jackson had some controversy of his own. And survived.
Could they become president? (if they weren’t already like Clinton was) I don’t think so.
Could they remain relevant? I think so.
ETA
I also think its easier to weather the storm if you’re already in office (whatever that office is) , although some have been hounded from office.
But I think its much harder to survive a scandal from the campaign trail.
During the tenure of John F. Kennedy, the FBI placed bugs in MLK’s hotel rooms-and recorded his escapades.
What I would like to know: have these recordings been destroyed, or are they in some FBI archive?
If these were made public today, what would public reaction be?
As an incidental note, what the heck is MLK looking at in the illustration for that column? Some attempted rendition of “sexual athleticism” ?
I think part of the issue is that there isn’t a transformative problem for a transformative figure to solve. If you look at the civil rights scene today, there isn’t the discrimination that was seen in the Jim Crow south. Sure, you can talk about homosexuality, but that isn’t on the same level. There is no organized movement to deny them basic civil rights like voting or freedom of speech, or to violently make them second class citizens.
I think so as long as one isn’t a black Julius Streicher like Al Sharpton.
No, actually it’s not. Racism is a comparatively new prejudice, historically.
Remember that for most of history, the average human lived in the village where they were born, and never traveled far enough to see any person not of their own race. Hard to maintain prejudice against something you’ve never seen.
Note that in Greek & Roman history, those slaves were of the same race, mainly captives from wars or their descendants. The Romans had no problems dealing with other races it seems; they had Asians and Africans in charge of some of their provinces, for example.
Honestly? And I say this as a huge critic of PC-ism and “racemongering” - and a huge advocate of “racism isn’t the worst thing in the world - stop whining about it, move the fuck on” - judging from the treatment Obama has gotten at the hands of the Tea Party and the right-wing press, I am certain that they would attempt to tear apart any black MLK-type leader if he was on the liberal side.
Not because I think they’re all deep-seated racists, but that they take advantage of anything they can use to make someone seem “different” and “non-American”, if his politics don’t fit with theirs.
If the MLK-type leader was on the right’s side, then shit, they’d piously defend him at every turn. They’re selfish opportunists.
I don’t think it’s really possible to even have a figure like MLK today. In many ways, the image we have of King is an artificial construct. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bad mouthing King. It’s just that he was chosen to be the face of the Civil Rights movement. With today’s media, I don’t think any movement would serve themselves by selecting one man to be such a powerful symbol. Even today, in the mind’s of many people, MLK., Jr. is the civil rights movement.
well if one imagines “scrutiny” as an honest deeper look than sure he would come out of that great, if one imagines it as what it is a euphemism for in modern politics: taking things out of context, conflating them, making crap up, anything it takes to destroy a threat to the status quo than probably not, and if “scrutiny” didn’t negate the man suddenly still alive they would probably just shoot him again, or dissapear him to an enemy combatant prison in secret.
Since most of what is known of MLK’s infidelities is based on the Hoover tappings, I think if it leaked the bugging of his hotel rooms would be an incomparably bigger story.* As for the plagiarism, I can see it concerning people who probably couldn’t have given a concise and accurate definition of plagiarism to save their gonads before but suddenly become passionate defenders of academic integrity when it’s convenient, like those who became newly minted experts on Hawaiian long form birth certificates. Just as you had the conservatives who took on faith and a wink that G.W. Bush completed his National Guard service but yelled that Bill Clinton was a draft dodger, or the liberals who’d solemnly lament a Republican politician’s checkered past but defend Ted Kennedy’s, his scandals would be something his supporters wouldn’t be bothered by and his detractors would swear was slightly worse than infanticide.
*As, in my opinion, it should. I certainly don’t admire MLK’s adulteries or his plagiarism, but I see them as totally separable from his Civil Rights work and main legacy. He wasn’t perfect, but his private life especially was and should have been private and any indiscretions and infidelities solely the business of him and his wife (who I’m guessing made her opinions well known to him but kept a professional silence in public). I can and have said the same of right wing politicians and political figures; it’s only when they make the sex lives of others fair game that I have any problem with anything they do in their own. As for the plagiarism, if his career was in academia I might care but otherwise I see it as on par with a college DUI- a stupid scandal but not one that has any bearings on his activities unrelated to academia many years later; it’s a bigger deal by far when it’s a professional writer like Alex Haley or public intellectual like Stephen Ambrose.
With all due respect…
Perhaps we’re defining racism differently… For all of recorded human history nations and tribes have pillaged, plundered, raped, subjugated, dominated both economically and physically (including enslaving) people of other nations and tribes for reasons little more than they didn’t Look Like Us.
Even in your post you mentioned slaves. Maybe there wasn’t racism among those slaves 
, but what do you suppose the relationship was between the slaves and the Roman? How do you suppose they became slaves?
Racism—the notion that my race is superior to yours and deserves to exert some influence over you (including dominating you) is as old as human history.
Based on what happened to Herman Cain, a conservative black would get exactly the same treatment, but from opposite sides.
Or contrast Clarence Thomas with Bill Clinton. With Anita Hill, it’s all “believe the woman” and “speaking the truth to power”. When it’s Kathleen Wiley and Juanita Broadderick and Paula Jones and the “first black President”, then they are trailer trash and should be grateful for the chance to be sexually harassed because Clinton kept abortion legal.
“It’s different when my side does it” is not confined to my side, or anyone else’s.
Regards,
Shodan
Would that be the same Obama that 50 million white Americans voted for?
Because I get the two of them confused.
So they’re either racist or opportunist? :rolleyes:
I don’t think you really understand slavery in the ancient world or even most of the world prior to the early 1800s.
The Romans were not enslaving or killing people “because they looked different.” They were enslaving and killing people because Romans were an expansionist, imperialist people. During the Republic the Romans weren’t integrating their conquests into a larger “empire” as they did later on. Instead, their conquests became akin to our modern concept of a colony, with a Roman governor of sorts appointed to lord over it but these regions were not part of the “Roman state” per se. In Rome itself, political power was linked to success at conquering new land or at effectively running a possession as a governor. For that reason politicians would be striving to make new conquests, establish new colonies, get more productivity out of existing colonies, and then when they returned to Rome after their tour of duty they would have more political prestige and power.
Part of this whole business of subjugating other peoples was enslaving them. In some ancient societies a conquest as a matter of course involved killing all or most of the adult males, and enslaving all of the rest of the population. The Romans were in a way smarter than that, they would enslave many of the people who fought against them, but when they would conquer a region they’d also basically give the indigenous peoples the opportunity to bend their knee and accept Roman domination. The Romans weren’t much about cultural imperialism, and would allow many of the local ways of life and religious practices to continue. As long as the indigenous peoples didn’t revolt and were paying taxes and such, the Romans weren’t going to be in the business of just randomly messing up their day.
However, a lot of them didn’t bend their knee willingly, and a lot of them revolted from time to time. This created situations in which the Romans could capture huge numbers of slaves. These slaves were used extensively in Roman agricultural and mining operations around the Republic/Empire, so Rome essentially became very dependent on slave labor for its economy to function. This was one of the driving forces behind even further Roman expansion, a desire to continue acquiring new slaves.
But the Romans were certainly not enslaving people out of racism. They enslaved other Latin speaking peoples on the Italian peninsula just as quickly as they enslaved Arabs, Greeks, Germans, and Gauls. Eventually as citizenship was expanded throughout the Roman possessions there was a bit less of things like enslaving other Latin speaking groups on the Italian peninsula, but throughout most of Roman history even a Roman citizen could eventually find themselves a slave–through indebtedness or some other misfortune. So Romans not only enslaved everyone else, they also regularly enslaved themselves (although not in massive numbers, it did happen.)
Slavery had no race based component, the only reason slavery ever had a racial component is because of the Enlightenment. During the Enlightenment, American slaveholders who studied and were to a degree part of the Enlightenment found that under Enlightenment principles you could not justify owning slaves. Until they created a self-serving fallacy, namely that blacks “needed” to be enslaved because as a race they were intrinsically unsuited to running their own affairs, so keeping them as slaves was a benevolent act of paternal affection. It’s interesting what humans can convince themselves of when they stand to benefit from it. But prior to the enlightenment there was little reason for racism to be part of slavery, slavery was just seen as something you could do to anyone weaker than you. In Europe slavery was practiced up until the 18th century but in smaller numbers. Throughout the Middle Ages some countries had slave populations 10% and higher, not even counting the huge population of serfs (who for whatever reason are sometimes not counted as slaves, but if you really read about what serfdom was it is truly just a form of slavery.) Muslim states had a policy about not enslaving other Muslims, but North African Muslims were infamous seafarers who would raid Ireland and other European countries and take Europeans slaves, they also raided the non-Muslim peoples in Northwestern Africa south of the North African Mediterranean Muslim states.
What on earth are you talking about? Nobody thought Clinton hadn’t had sex with any of those women.