King on Racism and the White Backlash – Part 1

King on Racism and the White Backlash – Part 1

Thomas Allen

In “Racism and the White Backlash,” Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pages 71–108, Martin Luther King, Jr., discusses White backlash, White supremacy, racism, slavery, the American Indian, liberals, and the church. The following is a critical review of King’s essay.

(First, I must remind the reader that most conservatives and nearly all conservative commentators consider King a conservative. Furthermore, many conservative commentators assert that King is an archconservative and the greatest conservative ever. Some have even deified him. Hereafter, all these conservatives are referred to as King-idolizing conservatives. Since King is an archconservative, these King-idolizing conservatives should advocate everything that King advocated.)

King writes, “It would be neither true nor honest to say that the Negro’s status is what it is because he is innately inferior or because he is basically lazy and listless or because he has not sought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” (P. 71.) (Many, but not all, Negroes proved King correct during the Jim Crow Era. Although many were lazy and listless, many were not, and they lifted themselves up. A vibrant Negro middle class was rising, which is why Stalin sent agents to destroy the Negro middle class. During the Civil Rights Era with all the benefits and privileges given to the Negro, people of all races suspect that the Negro race is inferior to all the other races. If it were not, it would not need these special benefits and privileges. Moreover, the welfare state reveals that many Negroes are lazy and listless.)

King blames all the Negro’s problems on Whites. (The Negro is not responsible for any of his problems.) White America bears the guilt of the Negro’s inferior status (as though genetics affecting nonphysical traits has nothing to do with the Negro’s status). (Because of genetics, races vary significantly in nonphysical traits such as intelligence, reaction time, behavior, rate of maturity, and proneness to certain diseases [see “Nonphysical Racial Differences” by Thomas Allen])

Erroneously, King declares that “since the birth of our nation, white America has . . . proudly professed the great principles of democracy. . . .” (P. 72.) (All the founding fathers who commented on democracy condemned it.)

King describes White backlash as the “old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalence.” (P. 72.) (Southerners, whom King loathed, were not prejudiced toward Negroes. Collins English Dictionary defines prejudice as “an opinion formed beforehand, esp an unfavourable one based on inadequate facts.” Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary defines prejudice as “an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.” The attitudes of Southerners toward Blacks were based on 400 years of observation, knowledge, thought, reason, and facts. Consequently, they were not prejudiced against Blacks.) Continuing, King writes, “The white backlash is an expression of the same vacillations, the same search for rationalizations, the same lack of commitment that have always characterized white America on the question of race.” (P. 72.) (Again King errs. The founding fathers and nearly all Americans before World War I had no ambivalence, vacillations, or lack of commitment concerning race. They were fully committed to the White race. For the founding fathers, the first nationalization law proves that commitment as it only allowed Whites to be nationalized. Moreover, they wrote the Constitution for Whites. [See “For Whom Is the Constitution Written?” and “Addendum to ‘For Whom Is the Constitution Written?’” by Thomas Allen.] Further, the commitment of latter generations is shown by the treatment and severe restrictions placed on immigrants from Asia. The Negro was a problem for which they had no viable solution although, before Lincoln’s War, many believed that repatriation was the best solution. Even Lincoln favored this solution.)

King writes much about White racism. He uses Dr. George Kelsey’s description: “‘Racism is a faith. It is a form of idolatry.’” (P. 73.) To this, he adds Ruth Benedict's explanation: “‘the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to hereditary inferiority and another group is destined to hereditary superiority.’” (P. 73.) “Since racism is based on the dogma ‘that the hope of civilization depends upon eliminating some races and keeping others pure,’ its ultimate logic is genocide.” (P. 74.) (Today, racism is Negro racism and not White racism. Negroes adore their race and seek to advance it as the superior race. In this endeavor, they have been highly successful. On the other hand, most Whites are racial nihilists, and many Whites are albusphobes and desire the genocide of the White race. Only the White race is being deliberately genocided. The ever-growing numbers of Negro supremacists far outnumber the almost extinct White supremacists.)

Although White America has not sought deliberately to genocide the Negro, according to King “it has, through the system of segregation, substituted a subtle reduction of life by means of deprivation.” (P. 74.) (If true, why was the Negro middle class growing under segregation?) Again erroneously, King maintains, “If a man asserts that another man, because of his race, is not good enough to have a job equal to his, or to eat at a lunch counter next to him, or to have access to certain hotels, or to attend school with him, or to live next door to him, he is by implication affirming that that man does not deserve to exist.” (P. 74.) (This statement is void of logic, common practices, and common sense. Nevertheless, since segregation laws applied to Whites as well as Negroes, and if King were consistent, he was claiming that Whites did not deserve to exist. [He did seem to believe that Southerners did not deserve to exist.] On the contrary, segregation preserved the Negro while integration genocides him.)

Next, King writes, “Racism is a philosophy based on a contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission.” (P. 74). (Based on King’s assertion, today’s the Negro is the superior race because Whites literally kneel in submission before Negroes. During the height of Jim Crow and White supremacy, Negroes were not expected to kneel literally in submission to Whites.)

Again, King errs when he writes, “For more than two hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, Africa had been raped and plundered by Britain and Europe, her native kingdoms disorganized, and her people and rulers demoralized.” (P. 75.) (Negro Africans captured Negroes and sold them to the Europeans. Since they grew rich from the slave trade, these Negro African rulers were hardly demoralized. Moreover, the European slave trade probably would have quickly died if Europeans had to venture inland to capture slaves.)

King credits the Negro as “the creators of the wealth of the New World.” (P. 76.) (If it were not for White management, these Negroes would have created little above subsidence. Haiti illustrates this. Under White rule and management, Haiti was one of, and perhaps, the wealthiest colony in the New World. Under Negro rule and management, it degenerated to become one of the poorest countries in the world.)

Next, King chastises religious leaders for not only not condemning slavery but for using the Bible to justify slavery. (Does King also condemn the Bible? Nowhere does the Bible condemn slavery. Instead, it sets forth a code for the treatment of slaves. Jesus never told slave owners to free their slaves. Neither did Paul nor Peter; rather they told slaves to be obedient to their masters. Because the Bible does not condemn slavery, the abolitionists abandoned it.)

Another error that King makes is that in the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court “affirmed that the Negro had no rights that the white man was bound to respect.” (P. 79.) (The Supreme Court ruled that like Indians and unnaturalized immigrants, Negroes were not citizens under the Constitution [see “Addendum to ‘For Whom Is the Constitution Written?’” by Thomas Allen]. Its rulings did not authorize Whites to do as they pleased to Negroes. If a White man murdered a Negro, he was guilty of murder — Whites had to respect the lives of Negroes.)

Correctly, King affirms that the founding fathers preferred the White race to the Negro race. None believe that the Negro race was equal to the White race. (Except for albusphobic Whites and racial nihilists, most people prefer their own race and believe that it is superior, whatever that means, to other races. Negroes do not want equality with Whites, they want to be and are now superior to Whites — except the White oligarchs.)

Next, he discusses the struggle that Washington and Jefferson had with slavery. At least, King comes closer to what Jefferson meant by “all Men are created equal” than most of today’s conservatives. “Jefferson’s majestic words, ‘all men are created equal,’ meant for him, as for many others, that all white men are created equal.” (P. 81.) (Some understand the phrase even more narrowly to mean that all Englishmen were equal in their rights. When Jefferson and others wrote about their struggles with slavery before the abolitionist movement, their dislike for the institution of slavery was the issue and not the Negro. They had no desire to make Negroes the political and social equals of Whites. Certainly, they would have detested making the Negro their superior as has been done today. Moreover, King failed to mention that many, maybe most, Americans before Lincoln’s War thought the solution to slavery was repatriation. Societies were established to repatriate freed slaves. They even established a country, Liberia, in Africa for the freed slaves. Suddenly freeing the slaves as the Republicans did at the end of Lincoln’s War and filling the country with freed Negroes was the last thing that they wanted. Correctly, they thought that the two races could not live harmoniously in the same country — and today’s race problem proves them right.)

Then, King discusses the torment that slavery caused Lincoln. Lincoln believed that the solution to the Negro problem was to colonize the Negro in Africa or the West Indies. Lincoln held this position well into his war. Later, he changed his position and “issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the Negro from the bondage of chattel slavery.” (P. 83.) (Like most people, King errs when he claims that the Emancipation Proclamation freed the Negro from slavery. It did not free any slaves in areas under the control of the Union army. It only freed slaves beyond the control of the Union army. Moreover, Lincoln lacked the constitutional authority to free slaves. But then, like Lincoln, King never cared about the Constitution. Consequently, no King-idolizing conservative should care about the Constitution. The Emancipation Proclamation was primarily issued as war propaganda. Likewise, Congress had no constitutional authority to free slaves — thus, the need for the thirteenth amendment. [This amendment freed no slaves in the defunct Confederate States because they were free before this amendment was ratified. It only freed slaves in the Union States.])

Then, King complains, “Four million newly liberated slaves found themselves with no bread to eat, no land to cultivate, no shelter to cover their heads.” (Pp. 83-84.) (Unfortunately for these Negroes, they were liberated into a society without a welfare state, although Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau to provide some assistance, where playing the race card was meaningless and where merit determined one’s survival.) According to King, to free these Negroes without the government supporting them was a great injustice. (Apparently, King wanted these Negroes to exchange their plantation masters for federal bureaucrat masters. Moreover, if the White man had to support these Negroes, how could they be the White man’s equal?)

Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Allen.

Part 2

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