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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12409 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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Given the mix of Constitutionalism and Christian Dominionism that motivated both MLK and John Brown I feel like both of their movements read more as "far-right" than "proto-woke".

To invoke God while claiming that people ought to be judged by the content of their character rather than racial or class traits is to explicitly reject intersectionalism and pretty much everything the modern secular left stands for.

Years ago I read an article arguing that the "content of their character" thing, while a memorable turn of phrase, was not really representative of MLK's true beliefs and he did believe that, in the absence of racial discrimination, the ethnic composition of an organisation would be reflective of its host country. Therefore, we ultimately have MLK to thank for affirmative action and DEI. In that sense he was certainly proto-woke, far more so than Lincoln.

And who was that article written by?

I need to dig it out. This definitely isn't the article I was thinking of, but it includes the following quote from King:

... whenever the issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.

From the passage above I infer that King believed some kind of preferential hiring (i.e. affirmative action) was necessary until achievement gaps had been closed.

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