It's becoming popular for people, including African Americans, to make a point of MLK's imperfections as a person. Of course it's useful to understand the person as well as his accomplishments but let's remember what he stood for. He was human but his message is good and right.
It has become 'popular' to call MLK's movement as one seeking "social justice" and that, in order to honor, respect and preserve what he started we should therefore extend his "fight for social justice". Unfortunately, that's a dishonest hijacking of his values for modern political correctness purposes.
In fact, Dr. King was a Christian first and his movement was "faith-based". What he pushed for was not secular, rather Christian. Judgement based on moral character was a pre-eminent need to him. To him, the expansion of and dependency on a welfare state would represent a failure of society, including African Americans who seem to have no problem with their increasing dependency resulting largely from a willingness to be okay with it. To Dr. King, this trend would no doubt represent a significant decrease in self-respect, a diminished will to succeed on one's own merit ... by choice more than by circumstances. Accepting the role of victim would be reviled by Dr. King.
Dr. King saw the original principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as foundational to economic and social freedom for all. He said(!), his dream was one "deeply rooted in the American dream" embedded in "the magnificent(!) words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence". He said as much many different times in many different ways but he believed it to be true. How one can say he didn't respect or love the principles(!) of those documents defies logic. To say he must not have really understood them is an ignorant thing to say about this man who studied philosophers and old cultures. He understood the value of those documents as unique(!) counterpoints to historical evils.
The greatest surviving highly politically correct claim is that those documents are racist in nature. Dr. King certainly didn't think so. Doesn't that matter? In fact, the most often repeated example is nothing but PC nonsense and twisting of historical truth for purely political purposes.
Yes, the Constitution made Blacks three fifths of a person ... for apportionment sake ... but one has to take it totally out of context to conclude it was racist in a negative sense. Southerners, a large Democratic(!) block of states in those days ("Dixiecrats"), wanted to preserve slavery and wanted to institutionalize it in the Constitution by counting slaves as whole persons for enumeration purposes but still not giving Blacks the right to vote. Being able to count slaves as whole persons without giving them the right to vote would have given Southern Democrats the POWER in congress to fight AGAINST freedom for slaves. The slaves wouldn't have gotten ANY more power by being counted as whole persons, only racist(!) Southern politicians would have been the benefactors!!!
The constitution convention delegates were faced with this dilemma. Either yield to Southern states and give them the power to resist freedom for slaves (by giving them enumeration numbers sufficient to do so, free of voting opposition by slaves) OR say no in which case the Southern states were prepared to remain separate from the United States. The former choice would, at a minimum delay freedom for slaves if not render it impossible and the latter would probably enshrine slavery as a fact of life in whatever country The South decided to create separate from the USA. Either way(!), southern slaves (minorities in general) would have been big losers if NOT for the three-fifths rule.
Then someone decided to try a compromise: count Blacks as three-fifths of a person. The southern states agreed to that because they thought they could still resist freedom for slaves (rights, voting, etc) while deriving the benefits from being part of a larger federation of states. What that three-fifths rule did was PRESERVE the ability of the Constitution's principles to migrate our laws to provide rights to minorities. Indeed, that the three-fifths law was eliminated is proof that the three-fifths approach worked. That would NOT have been possible if slaves had been counted as whole persons for enumeration sake without the ability to vote OR if the southern states had chosen to separate from the USA. If today's PC crowd had its way, slaves would have been counted as whole persons which probably would have led to the institutionalization of slavery in the South. Counting them as three-fifths of a person gave us the opportunity to overcome that detestable practice over time.
The Constitution, therefore, was ANTI-RACIST because the three-fifths compromise preserved the union in way that allowed us to eventually eliminate slavery in the South and give minorities all the rights that the Constitution promised. Without the three-fifths rule, the South would be far less free than it is today.
As far as Democrats being the historical fighters for minorities rights, that's complete nonsense. For nearly 200 years Democrats or those who were to become Democrats fought strongly for slavery and no rights for Blacks. In fact, they opposed most civil rights legislation until the 1940's. Too few people remember or know, for example, that it was Democrats who fought AGAINST the Civil Rights Act the strongest by a margin of 2 to 1 over Republicans. As recently as 50 years ago it was Democrats who outright fought for(!) segregation the most by far.
Don't believe the revisionist history of the PC left. MLK's movement was a faith-based movement for equal rights. He was a strong believer in "natural rights", ie, God-given rights, which was the basis for the way our founders constructed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. MLK loved the principles of the Constitution. The Constitution that MLK loved was and is NOT a racist document, rather it held the Union together (for the benefit of southern slaves) and set us on a trajectory to eliminate discrimination. Yes, we're not done getting rid of it even yet but we're still headed in the right direction.
In case you're thinking I have no clue what was going on regarding MLK's movement and my opinions are therefore invalid, I lived in the Biloxi Mississippi area in 1964/1965. Those of you who might criticize me but didn't experience real racism in that place/time may want to consider I just might have a better perspective. Even though I am a conservative.
By the way, you might find the following links interesting backup for my comments above. They don't talk about Democrat opposition to the CRA (Civil Rights Act) but that's a matter of public record easily found on the internet.
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2011/01/a-dream-not-an-illusion
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/08/30/martin-luther-king-holds-these-truths/
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2006/01/martin-luther-kings-conservative-legacy
http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/the-conservative-virtues-of-dr-martin-luther-king
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