Yes, yes, we all know that one "I Have a Dream" quote that Righties consistently misinterpret to be about "colorblindness."

Notice how she's leaning away from him. That's not just cringing, she's preparing to escape a potential attack.

The other type of MLK meme I saw today on politics stream involves the recent unveiling of this cringeworthy MLK monument in Boston.

The aesthetics of a monument are a rather silly and substance-free thing to criticize - but yeah, certain viewing angles (it's meant to be two headless arms hugging each other) support the various descriptions of it as a phallus or a giant turd. Other angles of the monument don't look quite so bad.

Agree something went off the rails here, but in terms of stalled racial progress, something much worse has been going off the rails every day in America from the time of MLK's assassination to today.

Hah! Found one!

Myth about MLK: Perfectly restated by the top half of the above reposted meme.

Reality: MLK, in one aspirational and uplifting passage of his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, imagined a color-blind society, but in context, he made clear that such a society could only take shape after serious efforts were made by white Americans to rectify the centuries of injustice they'd inflicted on blacks specifically.

Before arriving at that goal of perfect colorblindness, special *positive* treatment of blacks by the U.S. government would be necessary to reverse the pernicious effects of centuries of special *negative* treatment toward blacks by the U.S. government. Call it affirmative action, call it reparations, call it democratic socialism, call it democracy, call it racial justice, or simply call it justice. Call it whatever you want.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which finally granted formal legal equality, was a start, but only a start. And we've done very little since then.

Even by the time of MLK's own death just a few years later, MLK was growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of follow-up on the issues of reparations, affirmative action, economic justice, and the Vietnam War.