Selective quoting of King’s dream speech serves as a cudgel against race-specific remedies.

Evidence

This remarkable imperviousness to facts when it comes to white advantage and architected Black disadvantage is what emboldens some white Americans to quote the passage from Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech about being judged by the content of your character and not by the color of your skin. It’s often used as a cudgel against calls for race-specific remedies for Black Americans-while ignoring the part of that same speech where King says Black people have marched on the capital to cash “a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ ” King was evoked continuously during the 2020 season of protests, sometimes to defend those who looted and torched buildings, sometimes to condemn them. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1368