Martin, But... Not Malcolm
“You can celebrate Martin
…but not Malcolm
Dr. King fought with peace,
but Malcolm supported violence”
Well that’s a reasonable assertion
if you celebrate Gandhi
…but not Washington
If you praise Mother Teresa
…but condemn Ulysses S. Grant
If you admire Mandela
…but despise Roosevelt
If your heroes include
Cesar Chavez and John Lennon
…but exclude
John McCain and Colin Powell
If you applaud Betty Williams
and Maireed Corrigan
…but criticize Pat Tillman
and Chris Kyle
for their use of violence
to solve problems
…But if not,
then I see disparity,
inconsistency
I’m all for peace,
I’m just not for hypocrisy
If we fault a Civil Rights
leader for condoning violence,
would we also fault Jews
for violently standing up
to Nazis?
Or are we just that delusional
to what life was like
for people of color
demanding rights
in 1960 in America?
If we disband the American
armed forces
and only fight outside threats
with nonviolence,
then we can talk
about how we should
only celebrate
peaceful Civil Rights leaders
But unless I’m mistaken,
you weren’t opposed to
Veterans Day
You weren’t opposed to
using force to defend rights
and lives
You were just uncomfortable
praising a black man
for doing so
against the white man
Putting your life on the line
to fight for freedom
doesn’t just happen
in combat gear
It doesn’t just happen
in far off lands
We just seem to have
a hard time accepting
that in history,
America has also
been the bad guy
We have ourselves,
too often,
been the enemy
of freedom
Written December 2, 2018, after a conversation I had following the swearing in of Mariah Parker (on the Autobiography of Malcolm X) for Athens-Clarke county commissioner in Georgia