"Whoa....I didn't cause Mr. King to plagiarize, so don't kill the messenger. All you have done is talk shit about white people who have been dead for two hundred years! Why is that O.K.?

Were you alive when King was killed? because I was. Do you know what social conditions were still like in the South, or do you just listen to stories which continue to feed the anger?" - bododie


Two interesting points about context.

Within the context of MLK's entire life's work, how important are his failings?
I also am old enough to remember that assassination. I was a senior in high school in, of all places, Memphis, Tennessee. And I have to tell you - Nash was right in that many, many white people wanted King dead. The outrage expressed today at Jeremiah Wright's completely lifted-from-context remarks have given me a bit of a sense of deja vu - so similar to the outrage expressed about MLK back then.
How representative of Wright's entire life's work were those incendiary remarks he made? Who was his audience? Why was he saying that? Do you really think that it was because he wanted his congregation to go out and burn, loot and destroy? Even without knowing the context of those remarks, wouldn't it be more likely that he was basically (albeit not at all gracefully or judiciously) just trying to break down apathy and inspire his congregation to be more politically and socially concerned?