"Didn't move the needle" and "didn't completely end racism" are very different things. Obviously. You claimed the former. Which is ridiculous. I don't think anything else needs to be said on this point.
King "not being saddened" by the rebellion of African Americans is not the same thing as "[starting] to agree with (the former views of) Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. And I'm not "telling you" Martin never wavered, like it's an opinion, I'm informing you that the day before he died he delivered a speech that included the following lines:
"We are masters in our non violent movement in disarming police forces. They don't know what to do. [...]
We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles, we don't need any Molotov cocktails, we just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right.
And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda-- fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you."
I'm not sure even post-Mecca Malcolm would have said this. It would be an enormous understatement to say I admire King. So I won't stand for any revisionism of his views.
On the same note, I've read the entirety of Baldwin's piece (you can find it here), and while it's obvious there was still significant difference between King and X at the time of their deaths (see above), the narrowing of the distance, as Baldwin admits, is because Malcolm moved towards Martin's views after his trip to Mecca.
I'm not sure what point you're making about property damage. I'm not lumping rioters in with "the impunity to commit murder of the police." I have absolutely no idea where you're getting that from. I'm saying that the property damage, by and large, hurts ordinary, innocent people. Many of them among the poorest in France. And doesn't hurt the police or the elites in government at all.
In fact, it offers the police an excuse to flex their powers even more, and to crackdown even more brutally on everybody, including those protesting peacefully. It makes it easier to justify treating peaceful protesters as dangerous.
That's why I'm against it.
It’s not that I can only see my perspective. Yes, I’m against violence. Mainly because I think (and history shows) that it’s not the best way to achieve social justice. But I’m not “saddened” by Nat Turner’s slave rebellion, for example (only that it failed). I’m not “saddened” by Malcolm’s position of “by any means necessary” either. I understand it. I just don’t fully agree with it. It’s worth noting that in the end, neither did Malcolm.
So no, my response is not ahistorical at all. Without tooting my own horn too much, after writing about race extensively and professionally for over three years now, I'm pretty confident I know the history, especially as regards King, better than you do.
