CNN reporting on some interesting survey results from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. Seven hundred and fifty adults were interviewed face to face in the West Bank, and 481 were interviewed in Gaza, also in person. The Gaza data collection was done during the recent truce, when it was safer for researchers to move about.
The article on MLK is genuinely interesting and informative, but the author fails to actually prove their point. MLK saw riots as an inevitability, and he explained why they happen, but he never went beyond that. MLK says that if you sum up all the wrongs committed, the white colonizer is still the more guilty. That’s the last direct quote however. The next claim by the author is completely unsubstantiated:
“If it is violent to take that which does not belong to you for the thrill of, even briefly, imagining yourself on even ground with your oppressor, then King was concluding there was to be no hope for nonviolence. Perhaps not then, perhaps not ever. Martin Luther King, at the end of his life, was coming to understand the restrictions of nonviolence as a weapon against a violent oppressor who shows no moral compass.”
In none of MLK’s words does he say there is no hope for nonviolence. The author is making a massive extrapolation. I’m happy be proven wrong if you have any direct quotes from MLK where he recants nonviolence and promotes violence.
I must say though, it is quite interesting for someone so opposed to colonialism to harshly lecture a descendant of the colonized. My grandparents were born as British colonists. My heritage is of a proud culture who has their valuables stolen by the British – and that are currently still displayed in British museums.
So no, I’m not going to sacrifice myself. Colonizers have taken more than enough from my family line. I will not deign to pretend to know your background, so this may or may not apply to you – but I find it rich when white “leftists” who are so deadset against imperialism have no qualms about lecturing and whitesplaining to nonwhite people. A bit ironic, don’t you think, for a supposedly anti imperialist to insist they know better than a nonwhite descendent of the colonized?
I don’t know which side of this equation you’re on, but it’s apparent that the white leftist in a situation like this is more similar to their colonizing ancestors than they’d like to admit. Either you’re like me and you’re already well aware of this from so called liberals… or you have some soul searching to do.