Let's watch what Hillary Rosen says on national television, CNN, about what she says the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said about "white moderates" in Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail."
Hillary Rosen said Dr. King was talking about the "silence" of "white moderates," not their actions, not their statements, and not their worry about offending other people who thought it best not to seek bold solutions to the problem of discrimination and oppression against African-Americans. Here is the actual quote about "white moderates" from Dr. King's letter:
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.' Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
Nowhere does that word "silence" appear in what King said about white moderates. Nowhere. In fact, Dr. King speaks of what white moderates actually said and about their conduct.
Dr. King only used the word "silence" once in the letter, and it was later in his letter, where Dr. King contrasted the loudness of bad people with the "appalling silence of the good people." He made that point, not in the limiting context of white moderates, as much as he was castigating all good "people," of any color, who were not speaking out more forcefully against the racists who were loud and proud back in those days.
Hillary Rosen is a smart person, and, personal note, my folks went to high school with her mother--though I have never met her. However, I have seen Rosen on television for years shilling for corporate Democrats, and she is put out there not merely because she is smart and sharply spoken. She is put there to confuse people into thinking she is a progressive person simply because of her status as a lesbian.
For me, I stand with the pissed off black woman, Nina Turner--though I don't care at all about Hillary Rosen's sexual orientation nor Nina's skin color. What I do care about is Nina's passion for the issues and people I care about, which happens to include all historically oppressed groups, including LGBT. If Hillary Rosen wants to oppose Sanders, the guy who bravely opposed the anti-same sex marriage Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which Joe Biden openly supported, that is her concern. We voters, however, should be much more concerned with Hillary Rosen going on national television, and lying about what MLK, Jr. said about "white moderates," which lie I think was intentional. The reason I think it was intentional is because of how confidently and condescendingly Rosen spoke about that quote, as if she had been waiting for Nina to make the remark--Nina had been citing this quote a lot in the past week--and Rosen appeared very prepared to counter it. She had even circled back to it to make her wrong assertion about what Dr. King had written in his letter.
If I was on that exchange, I would have said, "Chris, get one of your staffers to pull up the white moderate quote and you read it on the air. Hillary, you had better be right, because I think you are dead wrong." That was my reaction watching this exchange. And I would have been right on the mark.
