Conservatives reframed King’s dream to erase group history and race talk

Evidence

This shift in emphasis involved an appropriation of the language of the civil rights movement by conservatives. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech became an important resource in this effort. What stood out for conservatives was not his rejection of the political tools that preserved the value gap; rather, it was King’s dream of a day when all Americans would be “judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” They read this to mean that individuals mattered, not the history of groups. Collective injustice gave way to cases of individual injury and demands for individual responsibility. In short, King’s dream became the basis for eliminating discussion of race matters from public view. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 301

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the value-gap concept: this is the mechanism by which the value gap is rendered invisible and unmentionable in public discourse.
• SEED: An essay angle on how the selective quotation of King’s ‘content of character’ line functions as rhetorical laundering of the value gap.