Anyone who has bothered to dive into the deep writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.—anyone who has waded beyond a shallow understanding of the “I Have a Dream” speech—cannot help but feel exasperated by the way King’s sharpness has been softened, downplayed, and neutralized by apologists for the status quo and advocates of “post-racial” niceties, into a one-dimensional liberal tolerance of illiberality. The more one learns about King’s life and work, the more astonishing it becomes when people spout a handful of his sentences to anesthetize any discussion about racism that becomes too uncomfortable for them. If you’ve lived in the United States for a length of time, you have surely seen this in action, no doubt by somebody who claims that they “don’t…

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