Barbara Ehrenreich: Hillary's Real MLK Problem

from the Nation:



comment | posted January 15, 2008 (web only)
Hillary's Real MLK Problem
Barbara Ehrenreich



At first I took it as another, yawn, white rip-off of black culture and creativity: the Rolling Stones appropriating the Bo Diddley beat, Bo Derek sporting corn rows, and now Hillary giving Lyndon Baines Johnson credit for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. If you had to give this honor to a white guy, LBJ was an odd choice, since he'd spent the 1964 Democratic convention scheming to prevent the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party from taking any Dixiecrat seats. By Clinton's standards, maybe Richard Nixon should be credited with the legalization of abortion in 1972.

But Clinton's LBJ remark reveals something more worrisome than racial tone-deafness--a theory of social change that's as elitist as it is inaccurate. Black civil rights weren't won by suited men (or women) sitting at desks. They were won by a mass movement of millions who marched, sat in at lunch counters, endured jailings and took bullets and beatings for the right to vote and move freely about. Some were students and pastors; many were dirt-poor farmers and urban workers. No one has ever attempted to list all their names.

There's a problem too, of course, with the conventional abbreviation of the Civil Rights Movement into two names--Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. What about Fannie Lou Hamer, who led the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's delegation to the 19464 convention? What about Ella Baker, Fred Hampton, Stokely Carmichael and hundreds of other leaders? The Great Person theory of history may simplify textbook-writing, but leaves us with no clue as to how change actually happens.

Women's rights, for example, weren't brokered by Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem over tea. As Steinem would be the first to acknowledge, the feminist movement of the '70s took root around kitchen tables and coffee tables, ignited by hundreds of thousands of now-anonymous women who were sick of being called "honey" at work and excluded from "men's" jobs. Media stars like Friedan and Steinem did a brilliant job of proselytizing, but it took an army of unsung heroines to stage the protests, organize the conferences, hand out the fliers and spread the word to their neighbors and co-workers.

"Change" is this year's Democratic battle cry, but if you don't know how it happens, you're not likely to make it happen yourself. A case in point is Clinton's 1993 "health reform" plan. She didn't do any "listening tour" for that, no televised town meetings with heart-rending grassroots testimonies. Instead, she gathered up a cadre of wonks for months of closed-door meetings, some so secretive that the participants themselves were barred from bringing in pencils or pens. According to David Corn of The Nation, when Clinton was told that 70 percent of Americans polled favored a single-payer system at the time, she responded sarcastically with, "Now tell me something interesting." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080128/ehrenreich

MLK didn't sign the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. He was present at the signing as well he should have been, but he wasn't president and he didn't sign it.

This whole thing being pushed by The Nation and others is so friggin' intellectually dishonest that it seems no different from arguing with Republicans who won't see how their logic is flawed and you want to tear your hair out.

It was a movement that would not be stopped. If it hadn't been lbj it would have been someone else. The two (movement/and lbj signing it into law) are not comparable. A lot of people lost their lives and spilled blood for this to happen. He wielded a pen.

It was a monumentally stupid thing to say though I am sure it was just something that came out wrong when she was speaking. I don't thinks she meant to diss anyone. She should have apologized, said it was not what she meant and then stopped. She is a grownup though and is taking her lumps. Better to stick to policy and an uplifting theme for the Dems from now on out till the primary is over. All this commotion is distracting and damaging to the party.

see an apology from that camp.