Stop the ignorant rhetoric

Just as some on the Left have been too quick to levy the charge of racism as the motivation of every Republican border security advocate, it is equally absurd for someone on the Right to claim that the legislative fight to build a border wall constitutes an advancement of the civil rights struggle.

For Vice President Mike Pence to contend that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have applauded the standoff over the Dreamers versus the Wall as “change through the legislative process to become a more perfect union” borders on the absurd.

In fact, Pence’s words cross the border into the insulting and sickening.

“Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy,” the Vice President said quoting Dr. King (out-of-context) in his defense of Trump’s proposed compromise to end the shutdown.

“You think of how [Dr. King] changed America. He inspired us to change through the legislative process to become a more perfect union. That’s exactly what President Trump is calling on the Congress to do. Come to the table in a spirit of good faith. We’ll secure our border, we’ll reopen the government, and we’ll move our nation forward.”

Dr. King, who argued for the dignity of all people regardless of their national origin, skin color, or ethnicity, would have been horrified by this analogy. Ask anyone who knew him personally. Our editors have, unlike Pence.

For the Vice President to argue so on “Face the Nation” reveals that he has never bothered to learn anything about the Great Man or his work. By invoking this line from the “I Have A Dream” speech to win $5.7 billion for a border wall, through the offer of a temporary DACA extension, Pence reduced Dr. King’s legacy to an insulting and ignorant sound bite which bares no resemblance to historical truth.

Just quiz the descendants of Cesar Chavez who remain deeply grateful to the Reverend Dr. King for his support at the time of migrant Hispanic farmworkers — and the need to treat people with dignity on both sides of the border.

The appropriation of this martyr — who made the ultimate sacrifice — by people uninterested (and even antithetical to his original objectives) hardly began with Mike Pence, though. Too often, Martin Luther King Jr.’s words have been used as a tool to justify the ending of policies which he loudly supported in his lifetime. (Just ask those who contend that the civil rights leader would have opposed affirmative action, an idea he loudly backed in the late 1960s.)

Mr. Vice President, if you want to do a deal on DACA for the Wall, proceed. But DO NOT pretend this is anything but legislative sausage-making. To cloak oneself in civil rights rhetoric to win a tactical victory resembles “white privilege” a bit too much.

This article originally published in the January 28, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.