Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Linda Sarsour and the Rejection of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Algemeiner.}

On a recent MSNBC news discussion show, Democratic Party anti-Zionist activist, Linda Sarsour claimed:
"Dr. Martin Luther King warned us about people like Chuck Schumer. He said it wasn't the Ku Klux Klan and white citizen counselors who were the obstacles towards justice. It was people calling for ‘civility' and people that were telling us when to protest and at what time and how to protest."
I find it fascinating that "progressives" like Linda Sarsour have the chutzpah to evoke Martin Luther King, Jr. when the very last thing that MLK stood for is Sarsour's brand of ideological racism.

The primary admonition of Dr. King was to judge people according to their individual character rather than immutable characteristics, like ethnicity. This was the fundamental message of his "I Have a Dream" speech on the National Mall on August 28, 1963. How someone who represents the American-left could not understand this requires explanation.

Anti-racism was the essential message of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States following World War II.

Yet Sarsour insists, “If you’re in a movement and you’re not following a woman of color, you’re in the wrong movement.”

This notion contradicts the teachings of King, and of the entire movement for social justice from Abolitionism to Abbie Hoffman, because it is racist on its face. What Sarsour is saying, in no uncertain terms, is that the quality of one's character is directly determined by one's ethnicity and gender.

This is turning the ideals of the Civil Rights Movement inside-out and backwards.

Sarsour also claimed, as the Elder of Ziyon noted in a piece entitled, The amazing color-changing Linda Sarsour (September 4, 2017):
When I wasn't wearing hijab I was just an ordinary white girl from New York City. 
Wearing hijab made you know that I was a Muslim. 
Generally, when we speak of a person's "color" we are talking about ethnicity, not ideology, religious or otherwise.

As long ago as the late 1970s it was primarily backward-thinking racists and knuckleheads who considered "race" as indicative of character. This is because the United States has come a long way in an exceedingly short period of time via ethnic relations.

It is sad that so long after 1968, and the assassination of Dr. King, that many of his spiritual-political heirs cannot stand the idea that the United States is actually among the least racist, least prejudicial, countries in the world.

The great irony in Sarsour's misthinking on the subject of King's legacy is that she wholeheartedly agrees with the racist notion, as put forth by the Women's March on Washington in 2017, that they needed to "follow women of color."

The cognitive dissonance is almost too painful to cognify.

The fundamental point of King's legacy, and, indeed, of the Civil Rights Movement prior to the rise of mid-late 1960s Black Nationalism, was that we should not judge people according to their skin color or ethnicity or gender. To do so is both racist and illiberal.

Sadly, Linda Sarsour and her allies are both.

If you want to understand how it is that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the last US national election understand the significance of politically-correct overreach. Within it you will find many liberal workers of European descent who do not appreciate being castigated as racist for no other reason than being "white."

9 comments:

  1. The fact that white Arab Muslim sharia Jew hating Brooklynite didn't run for public office and win like her uptown homegirl Cortez means that her handlers have different plans for her. Because there is simply no way she could fail to win a primary against an old white guy in NYC in today's climate. You have to wonder what the long con is.

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  2. Martin Luther King, Jr. never told "us" (whoever "us" is) one damn thing about "people like" Chuck Schumer. Linda, not the brightest bulb, is just smart enough to know she gets to make stuff up on account of her 'identity' over at IDPCMSNBC
    Did anyone at MSNBC challenge anything she said?
    Dr. King is dead, so he can't answer back. Lucky for Linda or she'd have to say he warned us about people like himself. The point is that she and those from the movement want to create a narrative. Antisemitism is part of the narrative, but for now they need to call it something else. Words, symbols, dead historical figures, etc., are nothing more than useful tools for coercion and co-opting.
    Schumer is a Jew. Figure it out. Doubtful anyone at MSNBC can.
    MLK warned us about people like Linda Sarsour. Could someone say that on MSNBC?

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  3. "When I wasn't wearing hijab I was just an ordinary white girl from New York City.

    Wearing hijab made you know that I was a Muslim."

    Very Liz Warrenish. Making fake claims about who you really are. Muslims are not people of color when they are white, and Sarsour deceptively climbs over the backs of others. Guess she could not make it on merit.

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  4. Identity is a slippery. One of my classmates won an obscure Hispanic student award even though he was a white kid who didn’t speak Spanish never had set foot in an Hispanic country, his dad was Scottish his mother was German but she was a naturalized Chilean citizen and THAT was what counted.

    To be fair my boys are white African Americans and so am I. Do we check the boxes then dare the authorities to deny it? Yuuup

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  5. QUOTE 1:

    Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura in a letter
    to his father in year 1488 August 15:


    “Jews in Muslim lands make themselves appear poor.

    They go about like an impoverished, despised people,
    with their heads bowed before Muslims.”

    SOURCE: Pathway to Jerusalem:
    the Travel Letters of Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura,
    written between 1488 and 1490 during his journey
    to the Holy Land
    (page 40) translated
    by Yaakov Dovid Shulman, year 1992 CE, 93 pages,
    CIS Publishers, Lakewood, New Jersey, ISBN 1-56062-130-3.

    QUOTE 2:

    Rabbi Yisroel Reisman spoke out against
    those Jews who plan their vacations for locations like:

    Switzerland, France or Italy where the people hate Jews.
    It would be better to visit the Land of Israel to benefit from its holiness and help our brothers economically.

    SOURCE: Flatbush Jewish Journal, 2010/6/17, page 32

    QUOTE 3:

    Martin Luther King Jr said:


    ". . . You declare, my friend, that you do not
    hate the Jews, you are merely anti-Zionist.

    And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews; this is God's own truth.”

    SOURCE: Israel Bashers Exposed by Famous Black Leader
    Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend by Martin Luther King Jr, August 1967, Saturday Review, XLVII, page 76.

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  6. Unlike Sarsour, I am old enough to remember the days of Dr King and the Civil Rights Movement. History has shown that the non violent way of Dr King was correct and that the calls to violence were wrong. Linda Sarsour attacks Schumer because he is pro-Israel.

    Every year on my own blog, I choose a Jerk of the Year. Sarsour is the reigning Jerk of the Year for 2017.

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    Replies
    1. It probably takes a year just to check all the nominees

      Delete
  7. The mediocre, morally and intellectually, always misunderstand greater/nobler persons and warp their words and actions for their own selfish and petty ends. Sarsour never gave me a reason to think she is one whit beyond mediocre.

    ReplyDelete