Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

In gratitude for your three-day weekend, if for nothing else (though it should be for plenty else, such as basic human decency!), please refrain from joining any mobs of racists who cite Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as their supposed hero in their fight against "reverse racism" while feeling free to hurl all manner of horrifically generalizing insults against people of African descent, up to and including and even beyond the word "nigger," just because one person with a high melanin content in her skin and apparently quite a lot of internalized racism in her head started it.

Posting "I agree!" in response to a black person who just said "I hate niggers" (or who quoted someone else saying it and voiced her own agreement with it) is not different than saying it yourself. And prefacing or postfacing this statement with a disclaimer that of course you're not racist is convincing absolutely no one who has even the slightest, faintest concept of there being any such thing as racism at all.

(Note: The original poster later reconsidered some of what she had written. Good for her, and good for anyone who encouraged her to do so. Not good for the racists who encouraged her and will undoubtedly continue encouraging in the other direction.)

I wonder how many degrees of LiveJournal separation there are between me and the scary people posting over there. I sure hope it's a lot.

Thanks to cacahuate for pointing it out to me and ranting appropriately, far more articulately than I did.

Other good MLK posts today:
Cartoon posted by cacahuate
Quotes posted by ellenore
Contemplation of hero-worship posted by sammka