Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Since The Daily Show finally hired a black host, we
Speaker 2: can properly celebrate Martin Luther King Day by asking New
Speaker 2: Yorkers how they celebrate his legacy.
Speaker 3: Shut up, don't interrupt me on Martin Luther King Day.
Speaker 3: That ain't cool. So let's do this. Do y' all
Speaker 3: know what today is?
Speaker 1: We're lost? We're lost day. Do you know what day
Speaker 1: it is? Today?
Speaker 4: What you do today? Well?
Speaker 5: Today we just Wills checked out of our hotel.
Speaker 6: Hotel, we're going to go get coffee and we're gonna
Speaker 6: walk around.
Speaker 3: So which one of those celebrates Martin Luther King Day?
Speaker 4: Well, none of none of what we've talked about.
Speaker 1: We're starting to do what's up for Martin.
Speaker 3: So this ain't reparations, but this is enough.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: Give me one hand once. Yeah, what y'all doing to
Speaker 1: celebrate MLK?
Speaker 5: Came to New York.
Speaker 1: Came to New York. That's it. That's all y'all gonna do.
Speaker 7: Want some shows, ate some food, did some shopping?
Speaker 6: All right.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna come back to y'all on Juneteenth, and y'all
Speaker 2: better have done better.
Speaker 4: Don't you like when he like you?
Speaker 1: Know, refused to move to the back of the bus.
Speaker 5: I can remember it snippets through the World news.
Speaker 1: And he didn't refuse.
Speaker 2: That was Ruther Parks name famous MLK quote?
Speaker 8: And what does he say after that?
Speaker 4: I'm not sure I name a famous MLK quote.
Speaker 1: Besides, I have a dream besides.
Speaker 2: One million ballance, and you could tell me something else
Speaker 2: that Martin Luther King said.
Speaker 5: He told the children he loved them, So maybe you
Speaker 5: do not know?
Speaker 6: Can we google it?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: I have a dream that one day, that's all I got.
Speaker 3: I have a dream that one day white people will
Speaker 3: actually know what's in that damn speech.
Speaker 1: Okay, just name five black people.
Speaker 4: Eddie Murphy, that's all the black person.
Speaker 5: You know, Edie Murphy, Barren left wing who left with
Speaker 5: Barren left in NFL is an offensive line?
Speaker 3: Rouse everybody know him? Just making up names. So how
Speaker 3: you celebrate Martin Luther King?
Speaker 1: Not too sure.
Speaker 3: So that's what he died for, man, for you just
Speaker 3: to be out here just not doing nothing on this date.
Speaker 1: No, I'm just kidding. You can do whatever you want.
Speaker 4: Man, We're gonna go see the Lion King. Okay, just
Speaker 4: got king in.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's as close.
Speaker 4: As you can get.
Speaker 3: I take the freedom and liberty, will go about and
Speaker 3: do what we want to do.
Speaker 4: That's our celebration.
Speaker 1: See that's that's a call from a black woman right there.
Speaker 1: That's right. Let's do what we want to do. That's day.
Speaker 4: I'm fifty.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking about. But still need lotion though.
Speaker 5: For more on doctor King's legacy, we turned out to
Speaker 5: du say slow than everybody.
Speaker 4: Don't say.
Speaker 5: If if Martin Luther King were here, where do you
Speaker 5: think he would stand on the government shutdown?
Speaker 6: I think he was staying inside because it's two damn cold.
Speaker 6: Why is Martin Luther King Day and the Coda's day
Speaker 6: of the year. I mean, why can't we celebrate them
Speaker 6: in July? And we can, you know, march outside and
Speaker 6: have a cookout.
Speaker 4: But then it wouldn't be on his birthday.
Speaker 6: Oh so a black man can't have two birthdays. It's
Speaker 6: twenty nineteen. Trump. I thought we'd moved past this.
Speaker 4: What I didn't know there was a civil rights anyway?
Speaker 4: Never mind?
Speaker 5: What okay, while you were indorsed today, what do you
Speaker 5: think and what are you remembering about doctor King's legacy?
Speaker 6: You know what I want to remember the real Reverend
Speaker 6: Doctor Martin Luther King, not the whitewashed Hallmark version, because
Speaker 6: every year people talk about the same stuff that I
Speaker 6: have a dream speech the March on Washington, how he
Speaker 6: had the voice of a Scooby Doo ghost. I have
Speaker 6: a dream, and I would have gotten away with it
Speaker 6: too if it worked for those meddling kids. But the
Speaker 6: real Doctor King did not fit in any box. White
Speaker 6: Motyeris think he would have been on their side, but
Speaker 6: he thought they were worse for the Civil rights movement
Speaker 6: than the Klan and Mattress stores are out here having
Speaker 6: MLK Day sales. But Doctor King was anti capitalist, and
Speaker 6: even though he was a reverend and a man of God,
Speaker 6: he allegedly had a whole bunch of affairs.
Speaker 5: Whoa hold on, hold on. Even if that's true, I
Speaker 5: mean that he that he had affairs. Isn't it disrespectful
Speaker 5: to mention that on his birthday?
Speaker 6: I don't think so. It's part of his legacy, a
Speaker 6: reminder that our heroes aren't perfect their people, And I'm
Speaker 6: not being disrespectful, just the opposite. MK was out there
Speaker 6: getting it.
Speaker 4: And probably still could.
Speaker 6: I mean, if you showed up on my bumble, I'd
Speaker 6: take him to the mountaintop in the Vadlone.
Speaker 4: I've never thought of MLK on bumble.
Speaker 5: Well, he wouldn't be on tender.
Speaker 1: That man had class.
Speaker 6: If everyone knew that fighting for civil rights could get
Speaker 6: you some a lot more people would fight for equality,
Speaker 6: equal pay, voting rights and whoever can stop black people
Speaker 6: from getting shot by the police for tonight.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll show up.
Speaker 6: I'll show up, all right now, First you get a
Speaker 6: million in the streets, then you get a million in
Speaker 6: the sheets.
Speaker 5: Still say, sloan, everybody, what is Martin Luther King Day?
Speaker 4: And how should people celebrate it?
Speaker 5: While from more on this we turn to a man
Speaker 5: who has had many dreams that no one wants to
Speaker 5: hear about.
Speaker 4: Where would you and everybody?
Speaker 5: Welcome boy, Welcome, good to have you, good.
Speaker 9: To see you, good to see your Mandela.
Speaker 1: Look.
Speaker 9: MLK Day is a special day for America, and it's
Speaker 9: a special day for me as someone who has been
Speaker 9: mistaken for Martin Luther King Junior many times. But as
Speaker 9: we get further and further away from his life, it's
Speaker 9: easy to forget what he was really about, which means
Speaker 9: sometimes people celebrate him in a really tough way. So today,
Speaker 9: I'd like to show y'all some of my favorite mlkups,
Speaker 9: like this one.
Speaker 10: The holiday didn't go as planned for some today. A
Speaker 10: business in Duluth, Minnesota created con troversy when promoting a
Speaker 10: sale in honor of the civil rights leader. The sign
Speaker 10: posted at the shop read MLK Day sale twenty five
Speaker 10: percent off everything black, but the owner says it was
Speaker 10: just misinterpreted. Twenty five percent off everything black.
Speaker 8: He was black, he was proud, he looked good.
Speaker 7: We were celebrating that.
Speaker 9: Are you serious for Mlkday twenty five percent off of
Speaker 9: black clothes? What it should be is one hundred percent
Speaker 9: off of black people, free at last, Free at last, pants,
Speaker 9: tops and coats of free at lance.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Roll.
Speaker 5: You know what makes it worse is that if you
Speaker 5: read Doctor King's speeches, you'll see that like he was
Speaker 5: opposed to consumerism and wasteful capitalism. That's right.
Speaker 9: Celebrating MLK Day with a sail is like commemorating Samuel L.
Speaker 9: Jackson Day by whispering. That's not what the ban stands for.
Speaker 9: It's not like in the middle of his mountaintop speech,
Speaker 9: Doctor King just broke off a number me with savings
Speaker 9: too insane to be believed. I might not get to
Speaker 9: that store. Much of my eyes are seeing the power
Speaker 9: of the discount.
Speaker 1: Come on, Corretta, let's roll you know it.
Speaker 5: Actually, it actually is unfortunate because it seems like some
Speaker 5: white people are out of touch with doctor King's legacy.
Speaker 1: Oh it's not just a white thing. In fact, Doctor
Speaker 1: King might actually be.
Speaker 9: Proud that on his special day, people of all colors
Speaker 9: and backgrounds have been man up.
Speaker 4: As repaused to honor Doctor King.
Speaker 5: This year, a flyer for a local event that bears
Speaker 5: his image is causing quite a stir, but its NBC
Speaker 5: twenty five's Walter Smith tells us right now, the party
Speaker 5: is now canceled.
Speaker 4: The party promoters nowhere to be found.
Speaker 11: This poster has a lot of people shaking their hands
Speaker 11: in disgust.
Speaker 1: It shows doctor Martin.
Speaker 11: Luther King Junior wearing a gold chain promoting a party
Speaker 11: called Freedom to Twerk. It was supposed to take place
Speaker 11: at this club, but it's been canceled. The owner says
Speaker 11: he's disgusted, and there'll be no twerking here.
Speaker 1: There will be no twerking here.
Speaker 9: Sounded like Gandolf in a Tyler Perry movie that would
Speaker 9: be no tworking. And then you know the strippers fly
Speaker 9: all over the place. And also how you go to
Speaker 9: photoshop Doctor King with gold chains to try and make
Speaker 9: him look cool. He was already cool. Look at the
Speaker 9: Look at these real pictures of Doctor King from back
Speaker 9: in the day.
Speaker 1: Look at him playing pool in a.
Speaker 9: Suit and a severe rights fresh from a march.
Speaker 1: That shot so cool.
Speaker 9: It doesn't matter if he misses. And here he is
Speaker 9: making the library look cool, standing in front of books
Speaker 9: like a stack of money. But this, this, this is
Speaker 9: my favorite Martin Luther King wearing sunglasses inside Trevor. He
Speaker 9: could have taken that call in private, but he left
Speaker 9: the door open for the haters. But maybe maybe the
Speaker 9: most popular activity on Mlkday is using his legacy to
Speaker 9: push your own agenda, and no one has done it
Speaker 9: in a more interesting fashion than this guy.
Speaker 12: I believe that Gun Appreciation Day honors the legacy of
Speaker 12: Doctor King. And the truth is, I think Martin Luther
Speaker 12: King would agree with me if we were alive today,
Speaker 12: that if African Americans had been given the right to
Speaker 12: keep in bear arms from day one of the country's founding,
Speaker 12: perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.
Speaker 9: Okay, okay, hold up, I'm pretty sure on doctor King's
Speaker 9: list of priorities, given slaves guns comes way below not
Speaker 9: having slaves in the first place. The logic, the logic
Speaker 9: makes no sense. This makes no sense.
Speaker 4: How would you do that?
Speaker 9: Like, dude, do you think the slave owners would have
Speaker 9: just had a little chit chat? Well, shit, we set
Speaker 9: them free. Oh no, them set them free. Let's make
Speaker 9: it interesting.
Speaker 4: Give them shotguns.
Speaker 9: Now. I will say this, if slaves did have guns,
Speaker 9: the movie Roots would have only been fifteen minutes long.
Speaker 1: Your name is clob or whatever you want us to
Speaker 1: call you know, that's cool?
Speaker 4: Cool? Okay, look, sir Roy.
Speaker 5: We've seen people mess it up, you know, with sales
Speaker 5: or you know, with their own agendas. But what is
Speaker 5: the proper way to celebrate Doctor King's legacy?
Speaker 9: Listen, man, It's simple. MLK was for racial equality, economic justice,
Speaker 9: and stood against the exploitation of the poor. And he
Speaker 9: did so because he knew that one day our great
Speaker 9: nation would rise above bigotry, injustice and poverty. And on
Speaker 9: that day, my friends, there will be twerking for everyone everywhere.
Speaker 4: Where.
Speaker 5: Would you and everybody my guest tonight is an amazing
Speaker 5: writer at the Atlantic who helped produce a special commemorative
Speaker 5: issue of the magazine called King, a look at the
Speaker 5: life and legacy of Martin Luther King. Juan Yeah, please
Speaker 5: welcome Vanu Kirk. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Man.
Speaker 5: I've been a fan of your writing for so long.
Speaker 5: You touch on so many different topics, you know, from
Speaker 5: black panther through to racism in America, the Second Amendments.
Speaker 5: One of the more interesting conversations that I got started
Speaker 5: because of your writing was specifically about teachers being armed,
Speaker 5: and you argued that in its very essence, it goes
Speaker 5: against the Second Amendment.
Speaker 4: Why would you make that argument?
Speaker 8: Yes, So the Second Amendment is supposed to be this
Speaker 8: thing that protects people from the government. The whole entire
Speaker 8: ethoughs of it is you get people, you give them guns,
Speaker 8: and you give them guns so they can build the militia,
Speaker 8: but to protect.
Speaker 1: Themselves against tyranny, right.
Speaker 8: And so you have teachers who are state agents, right,
Speaker 8: paid by the state, who are taking care of our kids,
Speaker 8: who have sometimes done bad things to those kids, and
Speaker 8: you're giving them guns. So, especially in Florida, you have
Speaker 8: a guy who was known to use the in word
Speaker 8: with his students and was suspended for doing it.
Speaker 1: You give that guy gun.
Speaker 4: Right, that's the tyrannical governments.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I never thought of that as an idea. I go,
Speaker 4: but you know, it's.
Speaker 5: One of those ideas where people go like, this seems
Speaker 5: like a good idea because everything leads to more guns.
Speaker 5: You go like, just give the people more guns, and
Speaker 5: then it solves the guns because if everyone has a gun,
Speaker 5: then I guess it means no one has a gun.
Speaker 4: I don't know how it works.
Speaker 1: I'll give my gun a gun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you give a gun a gun.
Speaker 5: That's the most people because guns don't kill people, right,
Speaker 5: people kill people.
Speaker 1: What if it gives the killing guns?
Speaker 4: I don't think a gun is a gun has killed
Speaker 4: a gun.
Speaker 5: I saw that in the movie Once the Gun Shot,
Speaker 5: the gun and the gun. Yeah, no one talks about
Speaker 5: gun on gun violence. You have an interesting way of
Speaker 5: looking at the world, and this issue of The Atlantic,
Speaker 5: I think looks at Martin Luther King from so many
Speaker 5: different places and through so many different lenses, which I
Speaker 5: really found interesting. Martin Luther King is one of those
Speaker 5: figures in America that I've always felt is mythologized and
Speaker 5: oftentimes misunderstood, and it feels like you've captured that in
Speaker 5: this article. Why do you think it was necessary to
Speaker 5: have an entire article about Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 8: So what we want to do is challenge people, you know,
Speaker 8: we want people to read every single article in this
Speaker 8: issue and come away thinking about something new, something they
Speaker 8: had never thought about, something they never even fathomed about
Speaker 8: doctor King. And what that does as a whole is
Speaker 8: so many times politicians bring up on people who will
Speaker 8: have an agenda, bring up doctor King.
Speaker 1: They quote the dream speech. They do the same thing.
Speaker 8: Okay, he wants us to live in a colorblind society
Speaker 8: where our kids can go to school together.
Speaker 1: They quote this.
Speaker 8: One part, but they don't quote the part about him
Speaker 8: being against the Vietnam War. They don't say his speech
Speaker 8: his letter from Birmingham Jail where he talks about the
Speaker 8: white moderate, and nobody asks themselves, am I the white moderate?
Speaker 8: So everybody now is King and not racist? But nobody's
Speaker 8: reading King now for how to be anti racist.
Speaker 5: It's interesting that you say that because there was a
Speaker 5: specific article or a piece of it that connected can
Speaker 5: be written by you in this and there was specifically
Speaker 5: about the idea of Martin Luther King and his assassination,
Speaker 5: And you say here, in the official story told to children,
Speaker 5: King's assassination is the transformational tragedy in a victorious struggle
Speaker 5: to overcome. But in the true accounting, his assassination was
Speaker 5: one of a host of reactionary assaults by a country
Speaker 5: against the revolution, and those assaults were astonishingly successful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's an interesting.
Speaker 5: Point of view because many people feel like Martin Luther
Speaker 5: King being assassinated was the beginning of the great journey
Speaker 5: that got black people to where they needed to be,
Speaker 5: And you're arguing that it ended a revolution that was starting.
Speaker 4: How do you prove that or why do you believe that? So?
Speaker 8: I remember when I was in school and I had
Speaker 8: a teacher who told me straight up that the civil
Speaker 8: rights movement was victorious, that we want that we want,
Speaker 8: And what I could never reconcile was, how did we
Speaker 8: win if doctor King was assassinated while protesting?
Speaker 1: How do we win the civil rights movement?
Speaker 8: How are we victorious if while protesting for higher wages
Speaker 8: for sanitation workers in Memphis he was assassinated and his
Speaker 8: Poor People's Movement was derailed, So I always want to
Speaker 8: revisit that point. So when I wrote that essay, I
Speaker 8: was listening to Nina Simone's song Why the King of
Speaker 8: Love Is Dead. She wrote it three days after he
Speaker 8: was assassinated, and she's talking about will the country stand
Speaker 8: or fall? She's talking about a country that seemed then
Speaker 8: on the verge of an apocalypse, And so I really
Speaker 8: wanted to go back to that moment and see how
Speaker 8: we get from that moment. Were you talking about the
Speaker 8: end of the world, the black community in shambles and
Speaker 8: tears and unrest and riots, and how you go from
Speaker 8: narrative here in fifty years and say we won?
Speaker 1: How does it happen?
Speaker 5: People would say, But then look at how much much
Speaker 5: progress black people have made since Martin Luther King. Surely
Speaker 5: things have gotten better. Black people on the up in America.
Speaker 8: Well, some studies are showing that that may not be
Speaker 8: the case. So we've got some studies out from the
Speaker 8: Economic Policy Institute that are saying that black wealth, black
Speaker 8: home ownership rates, segregation in schools haven't gone anywhere in
Speaker 8: fifty years.
Speaker 1: In fifty years, so what are we talking about here?
Speaker 8: And we're talked we were saying that the gap between
Speaker 8: blacks and whites now in terms of wealth is just
Speaker 8: so staggering that it's how do you even build policy
Speaker 8: to bridge that gap? Education has risen, but our kids
Speaker 8: are now in schools that are as segregated as a
Speaker 8: word nineteen seventy, So what are we talking about?
Speaker 4: That's an interesting point of view.
Speaker 5: And I guess I know a lot of people argue
Speaker 5: back on that, and they'll say, well, I mean Obama
Speaker 5: became president, fan, So I mean that's progress, isn't it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Obama's president eight years and now will we ever
Speaker 8: have another black president?
Speaker 4: Will you ever have another president? Is the question I ask.
Speaker 5: Here's something that I really connected with, and I guess
Speaker 5: because of South Africa's history, and also because it is
Speaker 5: International Women's Day.
Speaker 4: Is this beautiful quote in the article.
Speaker 5: Women have been the backbone of the whole civil rights movements.
Speaker 5: This popular narrative of the civil rights movements too often
Speaker 5: relies on great men, the great men version of history
Speaker 5: King Malcolm x, Burgen, Marshall, Stokey, Carmichael, other names you know,
Speaker 5: and it ignores the importance of women who also organized
Speaker 5: and led the movement and shows how their contributions have
Speaker 5: been sidelined, hidden in plain sights. That is a powerful
Speaker 5: narrative that many people forget, and that is Scott King
Speaker 5: wasn't just a sidekick.
Speaker 4: She wasn't just the woman at home. Why do you
Speaker 4: think it's.
Speaker 5: So important to acknowledge these women and what were they
Speaker 5: instrumental in doing in many movements?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I learned a lot reading that essay from Gene
Speaker 8: Deo Harris. She was talking about Corea Coretta Scott King
Speaker 8: and how Martin's development politically came from conversation with Karretta.
Speaker 8: So a lot of what he was doing was sort
Speaker 8: of man's plaining Kretta right. He was going out and saying, Okay,
Speaker 8: she was against the Vietnam War years before he was.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 8: She when they were courting each other and when they
Speaker 8: were still dating, she was the one who was sort
Speaker 8: of giving him these economic ideas, passing him along text
Speaker 8: about what to read and how to learn and grow.
Speaker 8: So you look at if you look at Karretta Coretta
Speaker 8: Scott King, not just as Kings helped me as someone
Speaker 8: who was an activist in her own right, you start
Speaker 8: looking at just all these other women in the movement
Speaker 8: who did so much Rosa Parks, who wasn't operative, were
Speaker 8: taught in school that she was a tired old lady
Speaker 8: who sat down.
Speaker 1: She was out there.
Speaker 8: She built the same organizing structures that actually King relied
Speaker 8: on when he was doing the boycotts. Those were built
Speaker 8: by black women against sexual assault, the same things.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so when when you look at these stories,
Speaker 5: how do you think it plays out? Because Martin Luther
Speaker 5: King exists in a place where some people use him
Speaker 5: to stage a protest and others go, we should use
Speaker 5: him to sell trucks.
Speaker 4: In America, everyone sees him in a different light.
Speaker 5: If Martin Luther King were around today, from what you
Speaker 5: have read and what you've learned, like, how happy do
Speaker 5: you think he would be? Would he think people have
Speaker 5: reached a mountaintop?
Speaker 8: I think from reading him, his thing was never being
Speaker 8: satisfied with where we are, because there's always space. The
Speaker 8: mountaintop in that speech wasn't the place where we need
Speaker 8: to be in terms of race. The mountaintop was having
Speaker 8: the vision to see where we needed to go. And
Speaker 8: I think that vision was that the road is ever everlasting,
Speaker 8: the moral arc of the universe, it's always bending words
Speaker 8: justice and.
Speaker 1: We bend it. So I think King would.
Speaker 8: He would be protesting regardless of whatever situation is.
Speaker 1: On the ground right now in America.
Speaker 8: He will be protesting because that's what he does us,
Speaker 8: That's what an activist does. They were always agitating, and
Speaker 8: so that's what I want people to take away from
Speaker 8: the magazine is that his activism was always agitating. It
Speaker 8: was always moving forward and progressing. And you see in
Speaker 8: the last year of his life before he was assassinated,
Speaker 8: he sat down and thought, how do I move this forward?
Speaker 8: And he came forward with the most ambitious program to
Speaker 8: fight poverty, to fight militarism, and to fight racism across
Speaker 8: the globe.
Speaker 1: And that was King.
Speaker 4: That was King. It's an amazing article. Thank you so
Speaker 4: much for being here.
Speaker 7: That's an amazing issue of getting Explore more shows from
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