Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. My guest tonight is an
Speaker 1: amazing writer at the Atlantic who helped produce a special
Speaker 1: commemorative issue of the magazine called King, a look at
Speaker 1: the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Please
Speaker 1: welcome Vanu Kirk. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Man.
Speaker 1: I've been a fan of your writing for so long.
Speaker 1: You touch on so many different topics, you know, from
Speaker 1: black panther through to racism in America. The Second Amendment.
Speaker 1: One of the more interesting, uh conversations that I got
Speaker 1: started because of your writing was specifically about teachers being armed,
Speaker 1: and you argued that in its very essence, it goes
Speaker 1: against the Second Amendment. Wh Why would you make that argument? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the Second Amendment is supposed to be this thing
Speaker 1: that protects people from the government. The entire ethos of
Speaker 1: it is you get people, you give them guns, and
Speaker 1: you give them guns so they can build a militia,
Speaker 1: but to protect themselves against tyranny. And so you have
Speaker 1: teachers who are state agents right paid by the state,
Speaker 1: who are taking care of our kids, who have sometimes
Speaker 1: done bad things for those kids, and you're giving them guns.
Speaker 1: So especially in Florida. You have a guy who was
Speaker 1: known to use the in word with his students and
Speaker 1: was suspended for doing it. You give that guy a gun.
Speaker 1: That's the tyrannical government. I never thought of that as
Speaker 1: an idea. I go like, but you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: It's one of those ideas where people go like, this
Speaker 1: seems like a good idea because everything leads to more guns.
Speaker 1: You go like, just give the people more guns, and
Speaker 1: then it solves the guns because if everyone has a gun,
Speaker 1: then I guess means no one has a gun. I
Speaker 1: don't know how it works, but I get my gun
Speaker 1: a gun. You give a gun a gun, that's emotion
Speaker 1: because guns don't kill people. People kill people. What if
Speaker 1: it gives a killing guns? I don't think a gun
Speaker 1: is a gun has killed a gun. I saw that
Speaker 1: the movie wants the gun shot the gun on the guns.
Speaker 1: There no one talks about gun on guns islands. You
Speaker 1: you you you have an interesting way of looking at
Speaker 1: the world, and this issue of the Atlantic I think
Speaker 1: looks at Martin Luther King from so many different places
Speaker 1: and through so many different lenses, which I really found interesting.
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King is one of those figures in America
Speaker 1: that I've always felt is mythologized and oftentimes misunderstood, And
Speaker 1: it feels like you've captured that in this article. Why
Speaker 1: do you think it was necessary to have an entire
Speaker 1: article about Martin Luther King Jr. So what we want
Speaker 1: to do is challenge people, you know, we want people
Speaker 1: to read every single article in this issue and come
Speaker 1: away thinking about something new, something they had never thought about,
Speaker 1: something they never even fathomed about. Dr. King. And what
Speaker 1: that does as a whole is so many times politicians
Speaker 1: bring up on people who will have an agenda, bring
Speaker 1: up Dr King. They quote the dream speech. They do
Speaker 1: the same thing. Okay, he wants us to live in
Speaker 1: a color blind society where our kids can go to
Speaker 1: school together. They quote it's one part, but they don't
Speaker 1: quote the part about him being against the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: They don't say his his speech, his letter from Birmingham
Speaker 1: Jail where he talks about the white moderate, and nobody
Speaker 1: asked themselves, am I the white moderate? So nobody everybody
Speaker 1: now is pro King and not racist, but nobody's reading
Speaker 1: King now for how to be anti racist. It's interesting
Speaker 1: that you say that because there was a specific article
Speaker 1: or piece of it that that connected with me written
Speaker 1: by you in this and it was specifically about the
Speaker 1: idea of modern Luther King and his assassination. And you
Speaker 1: say here in the official story told your children, King's
Speaker 1: assassination is the transformational tragedy in a Victoria struggle to overcome.
Speaker 1: But in the true accounting, his assassination was one of
Speaker 1: a host of reactionary assaults by a country against the revolution,
Speaker 1: and those assaults were astonishingly successful. Yeah, that's an interesting
Speaker 1: point of view because many people feel like modein Luther
Speaker 1: King being assassinated was the beginning of the great journey
Speaker 1: that got black people to where they needed to be.
Speaker 1: And you're arguing that it ended the revolution that was starting.
Speaker 1: How how do you prove that or why do you
Speaker 1: believe that? So? I remember when I was in school
Speaker 1: and I had a teacher who told me straight up
Speaker 1: that the civil rights movement was victorious, that we want
Speaker 1: that we and we won. And what I could never
Speaker 1: reconcile was, how did we win if Dr King was
Speaker 1: assassinated while protesting? How do we win the civil rights movement?
Speaker 1: How are we victorious if while protesting for higher wages
Speaker 1: for sanitation workers in Memphis. He was assassinated and his
Speaker 1: Poor People's movement was derailed. So I always want to
Speaker 1: revisit that point. So when I wrote that essay, I
Speaker 1: was listening to Nina Simone's song Why the King of
Speaker 1: Love Is Dead. She wrote it three days after he
Speaker 1: was assassinated, and she's talking about will the country stand
Speaker 1: or fall? She's talking about a country that seemed then
Speaker 1: on the verge of an apocalypse. And so I really
Speaker 1: wanted to go back to that moment and and see
Speaker 1: how we get from that moment where were you're talking
Speaker 1: about the end of the world the black community and
Speaker 1: shambles and tears and unrest and riots, and how you
Speaker 1: go from narrative here in fifty years and say we won.
Speaker 1: How does that happen? People would say, but van look
Speaker 1: at how much progress black people have made since Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King. Surely things have gotten better black people on
Speaker 1: the upp in America. Well, some studies are showing that
Speaker 1: that may not be the case. So we've got some
Speaker 1: studies out from the Economic Policy Institude that are saying
Speaker 1: that black wealth, black home ownership rates, segregation in schools
Speaker 1: haven't gone anywhere in fifty years, so so in fifty years, so,
Speaker 1: so what are we talking about here? And we're talking
Speaker 1: what we were saying that the gap between blacks and
Speaker 1: whites now in terms of wealth is just so staggering
Speaker 1: that it's how do you even build policy to bridge
Speaker 1: that gap? Education has risen, but our kids are now
Speaker 1: in schools that are as segregated as a word nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: So what we talk talking about. That's a that's an
Speaker 1: interesting point of view. And I guess I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people argue back on that, and they'll say, well,
Speaker 1: I mean Obama became president fan, So I mean that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's progress, isn't it. Yeah, obam was president eight years
Speaker 1: and now will we ever have another black president? Will
Speaker 1: you ever have another president? Is the question I asked um. Here,
Speaker 1: here's something that I that I really connected with. And
Speaker 1: I guess because of South Africa's history and also because
Speaker 1: it is International Women's Day? Is this beautiful quote in
Speaker 1: the in the article women have been the backbone of
Speaker 1: the whole civil rights movement. This popular narrative of the
Speaker 1: civil rights movements too often relies on great men, the
Speaker 1: great men version of history. King Malcolm Expergan, Marshall, Stokey,
Speaker 1: car Michael or other names you know. And it ignores
Speaker 1: the importance of women who also organized and led the
Speaker 1: movement and shows how their contributions have been sidelined, hidden
Speaker 1: in plain sights. That is a powerful narrative that many
Speaker 1: people forget, and that is credit. Scott King wasn't just
Speaker 1: a sidekick. She wasn't just the woman at home. Why
Speaker 1: do you think it's so important to acknowledge these women
Speaker 1: and what wol the instrumental in doing in many movements. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I learned a lot reading that essay from from Geene
Speaker 1: Deal harris Um. She was talking about Coretta Corretta, Scott
Speaker 1: King and how Martin's development politically came from conversation with Corretta.
Speaker 1: So a lot of what he was doing was sort
Speaker 1: of man's playing in Corretta. Right. He was going out
Speaker 1: and saying, Okay, she was against the Vietnam War years
Speaker 1: before he was. She when they were courting each other,
Speaker 1: and and and uh and when they were still dating,
Speaker 1: she was the one who was sort of giving him
Speaker 1: these economic ideas, passing him along text about what to
Speaker 1: read and how to learn and grow. So you look
Speaker 1: at me if you look at Corretta, Correta Scott King,
Speaker 1: not just as Kings helped me, as someone who was
Speaker 1: an active is in our own right. You start looking
Speaker 1: at just all these other women in the movement who
Speaker 1: did so much. Rosa Parks, who wasn't operative. We're talking
Speaker 1: school that she was a tied old lady who sat down.
Speaker 1: She was out there. She built the same organizing structures
Speaker 1: that actually King relied on when he was doing the boycotts.
Speaker 1: Those were built by black women against sexual assault. And
Speaker 1: so when you when you look at these stories, how
Speaker 1: do you think it plays out? Because Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: exists in a place where some people use him to
Speaker 1: stage a protest and others go, we should use him
Speaker 1: to sell trucks in America. Um, everyone sees him in
Speaker 1: a different light. If Mortin Luther King were around today,
Speaker 1: from what you have read and what you've learned, like,
Speaker 1: how happy do you think he would be? Would he
Speaker 1: think people have reached a mountain top? I think from
Speaker 1: reading him, his thing was never being satisfied with where
Speaker 1: we are, because there's always space. The mountaintop in that
Speaker 1: speech wasn't the place where we need to be in
Speaker 1: terms of race, the mountaintop was having the vision to
Speaker 1: see where we needed to go. And I think that
Speaker 1: vision was that the road is ever, everlasting. The moral
Speaker 1: arc of the universe is it's always bending forwards justice,
Speaker 1: and we've bend it. So I think King would he
Speaker 1: would be protesting regardless of whatever situation is on the
Speaker 1: ground right now in America. He would be protesting because
Speaker 1: that's what he does. That's what an activist does. They
Speaker 1: were always agitating and so that's what I want people
Speaker 1: to take away from the magazine is that his activism
Speaker 1: was always agitating. It was always moving forward and progressing.
Speaker 1: And you see in the last year of his life,
Speaker 1: before he was assassinated, he sat down and thought, how
Speaker 1: do I move this forward? And he came forward with
Speaker 1: the most ambitious program to fight poverty, to fight militarism,
Speaker 1: and to fight racism across the globe. And that was King.
Speaker 1: That was King. It's an amazing article. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being him. It's an amazing issue of The Atlantic.
Speaker 1: King the special commentative. The issue off The Atlantic is
Speaker 1: un News stands now through May, and you can alred
Speaker 1: the Atlantics dot com, slash and LKA to puntures a copy,
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