Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Today is Martin Luther King Day, a day when America
Speaker 2: celebrates the legacy of one of its greatest civil rights leaders,
Speaker 2: and a day where black people get to cut in
Speaker 2: line at your potele At least that's my excuse. But
Speaker 2: what is Martin Luther King Day? And how should people
Speaker 2: celebrate it? While from more on this we turn to
Speaker 2: a man who has had many dreams that no one
Speaker 2: wants to hear about.
Speaker 1: Where would you near? Everybody, Welcome by, Welcome, good.
Speaker 3: To have you, good to see you, good to see
Speaker 3: your Mandela.
Speaker 1: Look.
Speaker 3: MLK Day is a special day for America, and it's
Speaker 3: a special day for me as someone who has been
Speaker 3: mistaken for Martin Luther King Junior many times. But as
Speaker 3: we get further and further away from his life, it's
Speaker 3: easy to forget what he was really about, which means
Speaker 3: sometimes people celebrate him in a really picked up way.
Speaker 3: So today I'd like to show y'all some of my
Speaker 3: favorite MLK cups, like this one.
Speaker 4: The holiday didn't go as planned for some Today, a
Speaker 4: business in Duluth, Minnesota created controversy when promoting a sale
Speaker 4: in honor of the civil rights leader. The sign posted
Speaker 4: at the shop read MLK Day sale twenty five percent
Speaker 4: off everything black, but the owner says it was just misinterpreted.
Speaker 4: Twenty five percent off everything black.
Speaker 5: He was black, he was proud, he looked good.
Speaker 4: We were celebrating that.
Speaker 3: Are you serious for Mlkday twenty five percent off of
Speaker 3: black clothes? What it should be is one hundred percent
Speaker 3: off of black people, free at last, free at last, pants,
Speaker 3: tops and coats of free at last.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Roll.
Speaker 2: You know what makes it worse is that if you
Speaker 2: read doctor King's speeches, you'll see that like he was
Speaker 2: opposed to consumerism and wasteful capitalism.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Celebrating MLK Day with a sail, it's like commemorating Samuel L.
Speaker 3: Jackson Day by whispering. That's not what the man stands for.
Speaker 3: It's not like in the middle of his mountaintop speech,
Speaker 3: Doctor King just broke off, remember me with savings too
Speaker 3: insane to be believed. I might not get to that store,
Speaker 3: which over my eyes are seeing the power of the discount.
Speaker 3: Come on, Corretta, let's roll.
Speaker 2: You know what it actually it actually is unfortunate because
Speaker 2: it seems like some white people are out of touch
Speaker 2: with Doctor King's legacy.
Speaker 3: Oh it's not just a white thing. In fact, Doctor
Speaker 3: King might actually be proud that on his special day,
Speaker 3: people of all colors and backgrounds have been packing up.
Speaker 1: As we paused to honor Doctor King.
Speaker 6: This year, a flyer for a local event that bears
Speaker 6: his image is causing quite a stir. But as NBC
Speaker 6: twenty five Swalder Smith tells us, right now, the party
Speaker 6: is now canceled, the party promoters nowhere to be found.
Speaker 5: This coaster has a lot of people shaking their heads
Speaker 5: in disgust. It shows doctor Martin Luther King Junior wearing
Speaker 5: a gold Shane promoting a party called Freedom to Twerk.
Speaker 5: It was supposed to take place at this club, but
Speaker 5: it's been canceled. The owner says he's disgusted, and there'll
Speaker 5: be no twerking here.
Speaker 3: There will be no twerking here. Sounded like Gandolf in
Speaker 3: a Tyler Perry movie. That will be no twerking. And
Speaker 3: then you know the strippers fly all over the place.
Speaker 3: And also how you go to photoshop Doctor King with
Speaker 3: gold change to try and make him look cool? He
Speaker 3: was already cool. Look at the look at these real
Speaker 3: pictures of doctor King from back in the day. Look
Speaker 3: at him playing pool in a suit and a several
Speaker 3: right fresh time of March. That shot so cool it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter if he misses. And here he is making
Speaker 3: the library look cool, standing in front of books like
Speaker 3: a stack of money. But this, this, this is my favorite.
Speaker 3: Martin Luther King wearing sunglasses inside Trevor. He could have
Speaker 3: taken that call in private, but he left the door
Speaker 3: open for the haters. But maybe maybe the most popular
Speaker 3: activity on Mlkday is using his legacy to push your
Speaker 3: own agenda, and no one has done it in a
Speaker 3: more interesting fashion than this guy.
Speaker 7: I believe that Gun Appreciation Day honors the legacy of
Speaker 7: Doctor King. And the truth is, I think Martin Luther
Speaker 7: King would agree with me if we were alive today,
Speaker 7: that if African Americans had been given the right to
Speaker 7: keep in bear arms from day one of the country's founding,
Speaker 7: perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, hold up, I'm pretty sure on doctor King's
Speaker 3: list of priorities given slaves, guns comes way below not
Speaker 3: having slaves in the first place.
Speaker 1: The logic, the logic makes no.
Speaker 3: Sense, This makes no sense.
Speaker 1: How would you do that?
Speaker 3: Like, dude, do you think the slave owners would have
Speaker 3: just had a little chit chat? Well, shit, we set
Speaker 3: them free. Oh no, them set them free. Let's make
Speaker 3: it interesting. Give them shotguns.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: I will say this, if slaves did have guns, the
Speaker 3: movie Roots would have only been fifteen minutes long. Your
Speaker 3: name is tobal Oh whatever you want us to call
Speaker 3: you know, it's cool?
Speaker 1: Cool? Okay, look, sir Roy.
Speaker 2: We've seen people mess it up, you know, with sales
Speaker 2: or you know, with their own agendas. But what is
Speaker 2: the proper way to celebrate doctor King's legacy?
Speaker 3: Listen, man, It's simple. MLK was for racial equality, economic justice,
Speaker 3: and stood against the exploitation of the poor. And he
Speaker 3: did so because he knew that one day, our great
Speaker 3: nation would rise above bigotry, injustice and poverty. And on
Speaker 3: that day, my friends, there will be twerking for everyone everywhere.
Speaker 1: Where? Would you and everybody?
Speaker 8: Since The Daily Show finally hired a black host, we
Speaker 8: can properly celebrate Martin Luther King Day by asking New
Speaker 8: Yorkers how they celebrate his legacy. Shut up, don't interrupt
Speaker 8: me on Martin Luther King Day.
Speaker 1: That ain't cool. So let's do this. Do y'all know
Speaker 1: what today is? We're lost? We're lost day. Do you
Speaker 1: know what day it is?
Speaker 4: Today?
Speaker 1: Monday? What you do today? Well, today we just woke up,
Speaker 1: stecked out of our hotel.
Speaker 4: Hotel, we're going to go get coffee and we're gonna
Speaker 4: walk around.
Speaker 9: So which one of those celebrates Martin Luther King Day?
Speaker 6: Well, none of none of what we've talked about.
Speaker 1: Who's starting to do? What's up for Martin? So this
Speaker 1: ain't reparations? But this is enough. That's right. Give me
Speaker 1: one hand once? Yeah, what'll do to celebrate? Emaka came
Speaker 1: to New York? Came to New York. That's it. That's
Speaker 1: all y'all gonna do. Want some shows, ate some food,
Speaker 1: did some shopping. All right.
Speaker 9: I'm gonna come back y'all on Juneteenth, and y'all better
Speaker 9: have done better.
Speaker 1: Don't you like?
Speaker 9: When he, like you know, refused to move to the
Speaker 9: back of the bus.
Speaker 3: I can remember it, shippis through the world news and
Speaker 3: he didn't refuse.
Speaker 1: That was Ruth of Parks.
Speaker 9: Name famous MLK quote?
Speaker 1: And what does he.
Speaker 9: Say after that? I'm not sure I name a famous
Speaker 9: MLK quote. Besides, I have a dream besides one million ballance,
Speaker 9: and you could tell me something else that Martin Luther
Speaker 9: King said.
Speaker 2: He told his children he loved them, So.
Speaker 1: Maybe you do not know?
Speaker 8: Can we google it?
Speaker 3: I have a dream that one day, that's all I got.
Speaker 9: I have a dream that one day white people will
Speaker 9: actually know what's in that damn speech.
Speaker 1: Okay, just name five black people. Eddie Murphy, that's only
Speaker 1: black person.
Speaker 4: You know, Eddie Murphy, Barren left wy Lituid, Barron leffl
Speaker 4: is an offensive line out.
Speaker 3: Everybody know him.
Speaker 1: You're just making up names. Yet, So how you celebrate
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King? Not too sure. So that's what he
Speaker 1: dies for. Man, For you, this would be out here
Speaker 1: just not doing nothing on this day. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3: You can do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: Man, we're gonna go see the lion king. Okay, just
Speaker 1: got king in.
Speaker 9: I mean, that's as close as you can get.
Speaker 2: The freedom and liberty will go about and do what
Speaker 2: we want to do.
Speaker 1: That's our celebration.
Speaker 9: See, that's that's a call from a black woman right there.
Speaker 1: That's why she earned. That's what we want do.
Speaker 3: That's I'm fifty, That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Still need.
Speaker 2: My guest tonight is an amazing writer at the Atlantic
Speaker 2: who helped produce a special commemorative issue of the magazine
Speaker 2: called King, a look at the life and legacy of
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King, Jr.
Speaker 1: Please welcome Vanu Kirk. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 10: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: I've been a fan of your writing for so long.
Speaker 2: You touch on so many different topics, you know, from
Speaker 2: black panther through to racism in America. The Second Amendment.
Speaker 2: One of the more interesting conversations that I got started
Speaker 2: because of your writing was specifically about teachers being armed,
Speaker 2: and you argued that in its very essence, it goes
Speaker 2: against the Second Amendment.
Speaker 1: Why would you make that argument?
Speaker 10: Yeah, So the Second Amendment is supposed to be this
Speaker 10: thing that protects people from the government. The whole entire
Speaker 10: ethoughs of it is you get people, you give them guns,
Speaker 10: and you give them guns so they can build the militia,
Speaker 10: but to protect themselves against tyranny.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 10: And so you have teachers who are state agents, right,
Speaker 10: paid by the state, who are taking care of our kids,
Speaker 10: who have sometimes done bad things to those kids, and
Speaker 10: you're giving them guns. So, especially in Florida, you have
Speaker 10: a guy who was known to use the in word
Speaker 10: with his students and was suspended for doing it. You
Speaker 10: give that guy gun.
Speaker 1: Right, that's the tyrannical governments. Yeah. I never thought of
Speaker 1: that as an idea.
Speaker 2: I go, but you know, it's one of those ideas
Speaker 2: where people go like, this seems like a good idea
Speaker 2: because everything leads to more guns. You go like, just
Speaker 2: give the people more guns, and then it solves the
Speaker 2: guns because if everyone has a gun, then I guess
Speaker 2: means no one has a gun.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it works.
Speaker 10: I'll give my gun a gun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you give a gun a gun. That's the most
Speaker 1: because guns don't kill people, right, people kill people.
Speaker 10: What if it gives a killing guns?
Speaker 2: I don't think a gun is a gun has killed
Speaker 2: a gun. I saw that the movie Once the Gun shot,
Speaker 2: the gun and the gun. No one talks about gun
Speaker 2: on gun violence. You have an interesting way of looking
Speaker 2: at the world, and this issue of The Atlantic, I
Speaker 2: think looks at Martin Luther King from so many different
Speaker 2: places and through so many different lenses, which I really
Speaker 2: found interesting. Martin Luther King is one of those figures
Speaker 2: in America that I've always felt is mythologize and oftentimes misunderstood,
Speaker 2: and it feels like you've captured that in this article.
Speaker 2: Why do you think it was necessary to have an
Speaker 2: entire article about Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 10: So what we want to do is challenge people, you know,
Speaker 10: we want people to read every single article in this
Speaker 10: issue and come away thinking about something new, right, something
Speaker 10: they had never thought about, something they never even fathomed
Speaker 10: about doctor King. And what that does as a whole
Speaker 10: is so many times politicians bring up of people who
Speaker 10: will have agenda, bring up doctor King. They quote the
Speaker 10: dream speech. They do the same thing. Okay, he wants
Speaker 10: us to live in a colorblind society where our kids
Speaker 10: can go to school together. They quote this one part,
Speaker 10: but they don't quote the part about him being against
Speaker 10: the Vietnam War. They don't say his speech his letter
Speaker 10: from Birmingham Jail where he talks about the white moderate,
Speaker 10: and nobody asks themselves, am I the white moderate? So
Speaker 10: everybody now is pro King and not racist, but nobody's
Speaker 10: reading King now for how to be anti racist.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that you say that because there was a
Speaker 2: specific article or a piece of it that connected will
Speaker 2: be written by you in this and there was specifically
Speaker 2: about the idea of Martin Luther King and his assassination.
Speaker 2: And you say here, in the official story told to children,
Speaker 2: King's assassination is the transformational tragedy in a victorious struggle
Speaker 2: to overcome. But in the true accounting, his assassination was
Speaker 2: one of a host of reactionary assaults by a country
Speaker 2: against the revolution, and though those assaults were astonishingly successful. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's an interesting point of view because many people feel
Speaker 2: like Martin Luther King being assassinated was the beginning of
Speaker 2: the great journey that got black people to where they
Speaker 2: needed to be. And you're arguing that it ended a
Speaker 2: revolution that was starting.
Speaker 1: How do you prove that or why do you believe that?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 10: I remember when I was in school and I had
Speaker 10: a teacher who told me straight up that the civil
Speaker 10: rights movement was victorious, that we won, that we we won.
Speaker 10: And what I could never reconcile was, how did we
Speaker 10: win if doctor King was assassinated while protesting? How did
Speaker 10: we win the civil rights movement? How are we victorious
Speaker 10: if while protesting for higher wages for sanitation workers in
Speaker 10: Memphis he was assassinated and his poor people's movement was derailed,
Speaker 10: So I always want to revisit that point. So when
Speaker 10: I wrote that essay, I was listening to Nina Simone's
Speaker 10: song Why the King of Love Is Dead. She wrote
Speaker 10: it three days after he was assassinated, and she's talking
Speaker 10: about will the country stand or fall? She's talking about
Speaker 10: a country that seemed then on the verge of an apocalypse.
Speaker 10: And so I really wanted to go back to that
Speaker 10: moment and see how we get from that moment where
Speaker 10: you're talking about the end of the world, the Black
Speaker 10: community in shambles and tears and unrest and riots, and
Speaker 10: how you go from narrative here in fifty years and
Speaker 10: say we won.
Speaker 3: How does that happen?
Speaker 2: People would say, but van look at how much progress
Speaker 2: black people have made since Martin Luther King.
Speaker 1: Surely things have gotten better. Black people on the up
Speaker 1: in America.
Speaker 10: Well, some studies are showing that that may not be
Speaker 10: the case. So we've got some studies out from the
Speaker 10: Economic Policy Institute that are saying that black wealth, black
Speaker 10: home ownership rates, segregation in schools haven't gone anywhere in
Speaker 10: fifty years. In fifty years, so what are we talking
Speaker 10: about here? And we talked we were saying that the
Speaker 10: gap between blacks and whites now in terms of wealth
Speaker 10: is just so staggering that it's how do you even
Speaker 10: build policy that gap? Education has risen, but our kids
Speaker 10: are now in schools that are as segregated as a
Speaker 10: word nineteen seventy, So what are we talking about?
Speaker 1: That's an interesting point of view.
Speaker 2: And I guess I know a lot of people argue
Speaker 2: back on that, and they'll say, well, I mean Obama
Speaker 2: became president, fan, So I mean that's progress, isn't it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Obama's president eight years? And now will we ever
Speaker 10: have another black president?
Speaker 1: Will you ever have another president? Is the question I ask.
Speaker 2: Here's something that I really connected with. And I guess
Speaker 2: because of South Africa's history, and also because it is
Speaker 2: International Women's Day.
Speaker 1: Is this beautiful quote in the.
Speaker 2: Article women have been the backbone of the whole civil
Speaker 2: rights movements. This popular narrative of the civil rights movements
Speaker 2: too often relies on great men, the great men version
Speaker 2: of history King Malcolm X, Spergan, Marshall, Stokey, Carmichael, other
Speaker 2: names you know, and it ignores the importance of women
Speaker 2: who also organized and led the movement and shows how
Speaker 2: their contributions have been sidelined and hidden in plain sights.
Speaker 1: That is a powerful.
Speaker 2: Narrative that many people forget, and that is Scott King
Speaker 2: wasn't just a psidekick.
Speaker 1: She wasn't just the woman at home. Why do you
Speaker 1: think it's.
Speaker 2: So important to acknowledge these women and what were they
Speaker 2: instrumental in doing in many movements?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I learned a lot reading that essay from Gene
Speaker 10: Deo Harris. She was talking about Koretta Coreta Scott King
Speaker 10: and how Martin's development politically came from conversation with Koretta.
Speaker 10: So a lot of what he was doing was sort
Speaker 10: of man's planning. Kretta right, he was going out and saying, Okay,
Speaker 10: she was against the Vietnam War years before he was.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 10: She when they were courting each other and when they
Speaker 10: were still dating, she was the one who was sort
Speaker 10: of giving him these economic ideas, passing him along text
Speaker 10: about what to read and how to learn and grow.
Speaker 10: So you look at if you look at Karretta Coreta
Speaker 10: Scott King, not just as Kings helped me, as someone
Speaker 10: who was an active is in her own right, you
Speaker 10: start looking at just all these other women in the
Speaker 10: movement who did so much. Rosa Parks, who wasn't operative,
Speaker 10: were taught in school that she was a tired old
Speaker 10: lady who sat down.
Speaker 1: She was out there.
Speaker 10: She built the same organizing structures that actually King relied
Speaker 10: on when he was doing the boycotts. Those were built
Speaker 10: by black women against sexual assault, the same things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so when you look at these stories, how
Speaker 2: do you think it plays out? Because Martin Luther King
Speaker 2: exists in a place where some people use him to
Speaker 2: stage a protest and others go, we should use him
Speaker 2: to sell trucks.
Speaker 1: In America, everyone sees him in a different light.
Speaker 2: If Martin Luther King were around today, from what you
Speaker 2: have read and what you've learned, like, how happy do
Speaker 2: you think he would be? Would he think people have
Speaker 2: reached a mountaintop?
Speaker 10: I think from reading him, his thing was never being
Speaker 10: satisfied with where we are, because there's always space. The
Speaker 10: mountaintop in that speech wasn't the place where we need
Speaker 10: to be in terms of race. The mountaintop was having
Speaker 10: the vision to see where we needed to go. And
Speaker 10: I think that vision was that the road is ever everlasting,
Speaker 10: the moral arc of the universe. It's always bending wards
Speaker 10: justice and we bend it. So I think King would
Speaker 10: he would be protesting regardless of whatever situation is on
Speaker 10: the ground right now in America. He will be protesting
Speaker 10: because that's what he does. That's what an activist does.
Speaker 10: They were always agitating, and so that's what I want
Speaker 10: people to take away from the magazine is that his
Speaker 10: activism was always agitating. It was always moving forward and progressing.
Speaker 10: And you see in the last year of his life
Speaker 10: before he was assassinated, he sat down and thought, how
Speaker 10: do I move this forward? And he came forward with
Speaker 10: the most ambitious program to fight poverty, to fight militarism,
Speaker 10: and to fight racism across the globe.
Speaker 1: And that was King. That was King. It's an amazing article.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here. That's an amazing
Speaker 1: issue of getting a King.
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