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Page 4 THE EVERETT ADVOCATE – FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 2022 ~OP-ED~ Teach MLK, Not CRT H By Dr. Paul G. Kengor ere’s a critical question for enthusiasts of critical race theory, particularly its growing number of advocates on the religious left: How did MLK do what he did without CRT? That is, how did the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. manage to accomplish what he did without critical race theory? MLK preceded CRT, which began its rise in the 1970s, exploding in AmerLewis, and the Freedom Riders? • How about Harriet Tubman ican universities still later. King was assassinated in 1968. A few more questions: • How did Rosa Parks do what she did without this very, very narrow ideological theory known as CRT? • How about Thurgood Marshall? • How did the NAACP, founded in 1909, ever get off the ground without CRT? • How about Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Abernathy, John and Frederick Douglass? • What about Abraham Lincoln? • Juneteenth long preceded critical race theory. How was that possible? Returning to the Rev. King, how did he manage to accomplish what he did without critical race theory? The answer is obvious: MLK didn’t need CRT. Neither did any of these other fi gures. Neither do you. King, in fact, would have rejected CRT, least of all because of its roots in Marxist critical theory, whose origins are the destructive Frankfurt School. I asked David Garrow, the preeminent biographer of King (and certainly no conservative), about King and CRT. “CRT so post-dates him that there’s no connection,” Garrow told me, “but MLK would have most certainly rejected ANY identity-based classifi cation of human beings.” No question. For King, you were to be judged by the content of your individual character, not lumped into an ethnic category based on the color of your skin. You were a child of God made in the image of God. You were defi ned as a person, not stereotyped according to a group. As St. Paul stated, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). The Christian faith, which of course was King’s faith, rejects these identity-based classifi cations of human beings. King’s associates who survived him certainly rejected CRT. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker was close to the Rev. King. He stated: “Today, too many ‘remedies’—such as Critical Race Theory, the increasingly fashionable post-Marxist/post-modernist approach that analyzes society as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. institutional group power structures rather than on spiritual or one-to-one human level—are taking us in the wrong direction: separating even school children into explicit racial groups, and emphasizing diff erences instead of similarities.” Walker stressed: “The roots of CRT are planted in entirely diff erent intellectual soil. It begins with ‘blocs’ (with each person assigned to an identity or economic bloc, as in Marxism).” For the record, I get asked constantly about the Rev. King’s views on Marxism and socialism. They are frustratingly and notoriously diffi cult to pin down. Garrow would put King in the camp of some form of “democratic socialism,” probably closer to that originally envisioned by “social justice” Catholic Michael Harrington during his founding of the Democratic Socialists of America in the early 1980s, a DSA far removed from today’s DSA—the DSA of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Cori Bush. Today’s DSA is saturated with members who are sympathetic to Marxism—what its leadership calls “our 94,915 comrades”—and to atheism (and also virulently anti-Israel, if not anti-Semitic). Harrington would have been very troubled by this. It was precisely the atheism of communism that bothered the Rev. King. “Communism, avowedly secularistic and materialistic, has no place for God,” noted King. “I strongly disagreed with communism’s ethical relativism. Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fi xed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything—force, violence murder, lying—is a justifi able means to the ‘millennial’ end.” King would have vehemently rejected the embrace of Marxism by the likes of BLM founder Patrisse Cullors, a stalwart proponent of critical theory generally and CRT in particular. “We are trained Marxists,” says Cullors. “We are super-versed [in] ideological theories.” If only Cullors knew what a terrible racist Karl Marx was. I’ve written about this at length in articles and books. Both Marx and Engels nastily fl ung around the n-word; that is, the actual American-English racial epithet for black people. It’s alarming to read letters between Marx and Engels in German and be struck by the n-word jumping off the page. Of course, Cullors probably has no idea of that. She attended our universities. She would have learned only good things about Marx and Engels, and about critical theory. Dr. King would surely recoil at statements like the one issued at Thanksgiving from Cullors’ Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation blasting what it dubs “White-supremacist-capitalism.” The statement declared: “White-supremacist-capitalism uses policing to protect profi ts and steal Black life. Skip the Black Friday sales and buy exclusively from Black-owned businesses.” The shocking statement conOP-ED | SEE PAGE 15 A trusted family name combined with exceptional craftsmanship & professionalism. Call for a consultation & quote. 63 Years! • Vinyl Siding • Carpentry Work • Decks • Roofing • Replacement Windows • Free Estimates • Fully Licensed • Fully Insured

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