Colbert I. King (no relation), writing in The Washington Post:
The greatest contrast between the time King led the struggle for America’s legal and social transformation and now is a White House occupied by Donald Trump.
The federal government, once a powerful legal and moral force to make real the promise of democracy, is in the hands of adversaries who seek to restore a hierarchy in which the interests of the bigoted, the xenophobic, the sexist and the defender of white male privilege always come out on top. . . .
How far have we traveled?
From the promise of guaranteed rights to a return to the insecurity of injustice. A pluralistic America is being cynically drawn along racial lines by a president who is as far from the civility of his predecessors Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton and Obama as the charter of the Confederacy was from the Constitution.
King, and the movement he led, would be outraged. The rest of us should be, too.
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And yet, as neither you nor Colbert I. King suggest, the present president, who gives power and confidence to the forces of injustice and intolerance, is not the cause of that thinking, but the result of it. His standing and actions and agenda are energized by those who see the opportunity to emphasize our pluralism and separate us.
I know. But I think his argument holds: that those at the top are working to undo past accomplishments. The hatred and xenophobia have always been there, and now they have a spokesman at the top.
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