Dr. MLK Jr.

A Collaborative Post is Going Down. This is a Missy Elliot M-Theory Exclusive.

So, a small intro is necessary. The pictures are courtesy of LIFE (obviously). You can browse their archives via Google. It's amazing, I couldn't believe it when I found colour photos of Dr. King! The main Part of this post was written by Vexed, I asked him to write a few thoughts on Martin Luther King Jr. day. Anything Bold-Italic is me inserting my opinion (wise and otherwise (mostly otherwise)).
-Zoop

Wiping the sleep out my eyes this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I just feel I need to address a couple of misappropriations and misnomers running rampant in popular thought today.

1. Barack Obama is NOWHERE NEAR as fine an orator as MLK. Period. Amen!

I understand that vague comparisons and categories are what's hot in the streets because they don't require you to think, but let's not get carried away. Obama's style of oration owes much to Dr. King, but doesn't come close in scope or substance (Sun > lightbulb). We've become too used to having George W. Bush (possessing the rhetorical skills of Foghorn Leghorn Porky Pig) as president, who makes everybody else sound like Winston Churchill. This is not to detract from Pres. Obama's abilities as a speaker, but as ODB might've said "MLK is the father of his whole style". I stood 50 feet away from President Obama whilst he was speaking and there's no question that it was moving. But let that be enough. Go listen to "I Have A Dream" one more time and realize that MLK was in another league. Please? I mean, most people are only familiar with that one piece of work (if any), I beg you to read/listen to something else by him. "What else should I familiarize myself with?" You might ask. Anything. Anything else, and you would understand how well he strung words together.

2. Contrary to what you may have heard approximately 17,000 times between election night and today, when Dr. King said "I've seen the Promised Land", he wasn't referring to today.

Just because we've got a black president, all of a sudden everything's all good? Too often, I fear the collective mentality of white people (gross over generalizations aside) is "Alright black people. You managed to win the presidency. I don't want to hear about racism any more. It's dead". Tell that to the families of Sean Bell or Oscar Grant. As long as black people disproportionately fill our prisons, ghettos and morgues, this can't be the Promised Land.




3. Really, when I think about Martin Luther King Jr. it just heightens my awareness of the vacuum of leadership present in today's world. Most of the problems created over the past 30 years, and the solutions we need today can be attributed to this gaping hole where revolutionary thought should be. I hold out hope that Obama can fill this void, but I fear that America's stagnation (mental and physical) will smother any attempt at change. Maybe Obama can pull Excalibur from the stone where MLK left it when he died, but in my mind there will only be one King.