So-Called ‘Anti-Racism’ Runs Counter to the Ideals of the Civil Rights Movement

We should recommit ourselves to MLK’s vision of racial integration and brotherly love before it’s too late.

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About the Author

Julian Adorney is the founder of Heal the West, a Substack movement dedicated to preserving and protecting Western civilization. You can find him on X at @Julian_Liberty.

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Many self-described “anti-racists” paint themselves as noble standard-bearers carrying on the legacy of the civil rights movement. Ibram X. Kendi, writing for The Atlantic, refers to “an anti-racist [Martin Luther] King [Jr.]” and says that attempts to dissociate King from contemporary anti-racists amounts to a “second assassination” of King–this time of his legacy rather than his body. In a post for Martin Luther King Day 2023, Penn Medicine’s CPUP Anti-Racism Committee portray themselves as carrying on King’s legacy. A CNN Explainer discussing Critical Race Theory suggested that, “the idea behind it [Critical Race Theory] goes back much further, to the work of civil rights activists such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Fannie Lou Hamer and Pauli Murray.”

There’s some substance to this assertion. In certain speeches and passages, MLK in particular can sound a lot like a modern-day “anti-racist.” As John Wood Jr. notes in Quillette, King endorsed something resembling the “implicit bias” discussed by writers such as Robin DiAngelo. He talked about systemic racism and the “white power structure.” In a passage in Stride Toward Freedom that parallels Kendi’s famous declaration that all gaps in achievement between racial groups are caused by racism, King writes that “They [segregationist commentators] are never honest enough to admit that the academic and cultural lags in the Negro community are themselves the result of segregation and discrimination.”

Furthermore, King strongly supported affirmative action in 1965 as a necessary corrective to centuries of segregation.

Of course, King was writing in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s an open question whether his analysis of black-white relations still holds 70 years later. Indeed, a frequent critique of modern-day “anti-racists” is that too many of them still pretend we’re stuck in the 1960s. If King were still alive, would he think and write differently about the “white power structure” than he did in 1963?

But a deeper rift exists between civil rights leaders like King and the ideals espoused by too many of today’s “anti-racists.” In at least three key areas, the ideals of many so-called “anti-racists” (who author Coleman Hughes perhaps more accurately refers to as “neo-racists” in his book The End of Race Politics) today are completely at odds with those of the civil rights movement.

Regarding racial integration, for instance, many “anti-racists” are pushing for a world that’s radically different from the visions of civil rights activists like King and Murray. At the heart of these men’s visions was racial integration. Murray, a queer black civil rights activist, proclaimed in 1945 that, “I intend to destroy segregation by positive and embracing methods.” “When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me,” he said, “I shall draw a larger circle to include them. When they speak out for the privileges of a puny group, I shall shout for the rights of all mankind.”

Speaking at the Youth March for Integrated Schools in 1959, King intoned, “As I stand here and look out upon the thousands of Negro faces, and the thousands of white faces, intermingled like the waters of a river, I see only one face—the face of the future.”

In contrast, some of the most prominent “anti-racist” voices actively promote a segregationist agenda. A Washington Post article asks, “Can black and white women be true friends?” The author, a black woman, answers that question in the negative. Why? “Generally speaking,” she writes, “it’s not that I dislike white women. Generally speaking, it’s that I do not trust them. Generally speaking, most black women don’t.” An article in Vice even cautions white people against entering into an interracial marriage. “If you’re trying to start a mixed raced family,” the author warns, you should “sit down and deeply interrogate your intentions.”

Why do leading “anti-racists” actively discourage racial integration, using rhetoric that eerily echoes the KKK rather than MLK? Some believe the perceptions of black and white people are so divergent that genuine interracial communication is nearly impossible. In her New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo describes the difference in perspective between white and black Americans as “not just a gap in experience and viewpoint,” but as “a chasm you could drop entire solar systems into.” Others seem to perceive members of different races as belonging to truly separate species. In their book Is Everyone Really Equal?, Robin DiAngelo and Özlem Sensoy argue that members of minority groups are characterized by the following traits: “feels inappropriate, awkward, doesn’t trust perception,” “find it difficult to speak up,” are “timid,” and “lack initiative.” By contrast, members of majority groups (e.g., white people) are characterized thusly: “presumptuous, does not listen, interrupts, raises voice, bullies, threatens violence, becomes violent.”

When these “anti-racists” caution against racial intermingling on the grounds that white people and black people are fundamentally different and/or cannot understand each others’ perspective, they can no longer claim to be champions of the vision for civil rights shared by leaders like King and Murray.

The second big area of difference between many modern-day “anti-racists” and the civil rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s is that the foundational ideal of the latter was brotherly love. King emphasized to his followers that, “Love must be our regulating ideal.” While leading the Montgomery bus boycotts, he urged every speaker and minister within the movement to hew close to this ideal. In his book, Stride Toward Freedom, King recounts an instance when one minister “lash[ed] out against the whites in distinctly untheological terms” and referred to extreme members of the white community as “dirty crackers.” King reports that the offending minister “was politely but firmly informed that his insulting phrases were out of place.”

Why was King so determined that the civil rights movement avoid descending into hatred and bitterness towards their oppressors? One reason was his strong Christian ideals. He quoted Jesus to his followers: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.” But King also understood tribal psychology and knew that lasting change could not be achieved through mutual hatred. In Stride Toward Freedom, he noted that, “To meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe.” “Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man,” he continued, “but to win his friendship and understanding.”

But retaliatory hate is the modus operandi of too many “anti-racists” today. Saira Rao and Regina Jackson dedicate their New York Times bestseller White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism And How to Do Better to “all Black, Indigenous, brown, and non-white girls, women, and non-binary identifying folks who are sick and tired of white women’s bullshit.” Authors like DiAngelo and Sensoy are comfortable dismissing all white people as “bullies” who “threaten violence” and “becomes [sic] violent.” In 2021, Yale University’s Child Study Center hosted a psychiatrist who delivered a lecture titled, “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind,” where white people were likened to “a demented violent predator who thinks they are a saint or a superhero,” and the speaker openly fantasized about murdering white people.

In 2023, professors Michael Bernstein and April Bleske-Rechek published the results of a study wherein participants were shown three quotes from Hitler about Jews, but replaced the term “Jews” with “Whites.” Participants were then asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statements. The quotes are as follows:

1. “...the language of the [White] people, who speak to conceal, or at least veil, their thoughts. Their real purpose is often not in the writing itself, but sleeping snugly between the lines.”

2. “For reasons which will immediately be apparent, [Whites] have never possessed a culture of their own and the basis for their knowledge has always been furnished by the civilizations of others.”

3. “To achieve their goal, [Whites] proceed as follows: they creep up on the workers in order to win their confidence, pretending to have compassion.”

Fully 50 percent of liberals sampled agreed with at least one of the three statements.

King cautioned against “retaliatory hate,” understanding that bitterness and rage would not undo the sins of oppression. More fundamentally, he embraced the foundational Christian belief that all humans are made in the image of God, and thus have equal and intrinsic value. The prevailing message of too many on the far-left is the opposite: retaliatory hatred is to be lauded, because some races are just better than others.

The third foundational area where many self-proclaimed “anti-racists” diverge from the civil rights movement's ideals is their approach to class. In Stride Toward Freedom, King describes the mass meetings of the Montgomery bus boycott like this:

The mass meetings also cut across class lines. The vast majority present were working people; yet there was always an appreciable number of professionals in the audience. Physicians, teachers, and lawyers sat or stood beside domestic workers and unskilled laborers. The PhDs and the no "Ds" were bound together in a common venture. The so-called "big Negroes" who owned cars and had never ridden the buses came to know the maids and the laborers who rode the buses every day. Men and women who had been separated from each other by false standards of class were now singing and praying together in a common struggle for freedom and human dignity.

In contrast, the “anti-racist” movement in recent years has largely catered to and been driven by elites. For instance, a 2023 New York Times article titled “The Failure of Progressive Movements” explored why movements like Black Lives Matter have struggled to enact real change. One explanation was that, as liberal writer Fredrik DeBoer says, “today, left-activist spaces are dominated by the college-educated, many of whom grew up in affluence and have never worked a day at a physically or emotionally demanding job.” As a result, progressive movements often prioritize “the immaterial and symbolic” over “the material and the concrete.” They obsess over pronoun usage, microaggressions directed at minorities at top universities, and whether Tracy Chapman was as successful as Luke Combs. Think what you will about all that, but this obsession with elite life is a far cry from “Workers of the world, unite.” Maybe that’s why a recent Gallup poll found Democrats bleeding support from people who never went to college, but retaining strong support among those with a postgraduate degree.

Of course, not all “anti-racists” think this way. I know and admire many on the far-left who courageously advocate for integration and a society where skin color impacts life outcomes as little as hair color. But too many “anti-racists” endorse a broken ideology at odds with the foundational ideals of the civil rights movement. This ideology–endorsed by editors at top publications, by Ivy League universities, by New York Times bestselling authors–signifies a rot that needs to be exposed and then expunged.

King dreamed of a future characterized by racial integration and brotherly love, where no person is valued more or less highly due to the color of their skin. We should recommit ourselves to that vision before it’s too late.

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