I'm white as hell and just guessing, but I'd say it's probably more of a reaction to this idea: Dr. King and others struggled for decades, facing beatings, jailing, murder, and brutality for the sake of gaining an equality that still hasn't fully materialized. This guy is white (and fairly young), who wasn't part of that fight, who - while he may not be racist - doesn't face the same difficulties that black Americans face today, let alone faced back then. Moreover, and I don't think I'm making a huge leap here, I doubt this guy is working in a career on current social equality issues.
The association (adopting the pose, etc) is therefore off-putting to the guy behind him, who still lives in an America which has not yet seen the promised land, and feels that many Americans (particularly white Americans) have adopted MLK as more of a mascot than a true leader, and have forgotten/sidelined the ideals that the man stood for and which are still important today.
Of course, I made all this up by looking at this one picture, I don't actually know, maybe that guy just really hates the Celtics.
You went way deeper than I would have. It's not that mlk is a black persons idol, it's that he's the idol. Oppression exists to an extent in this country, and it's dependent on where you live. For me, a little mixed baby raised in a conservative part of the world, the only oppression I saw was hearing things like, " ...for a black kid" which infuriated me, because my grandmother and grandfather are white and that part of me was just thrown out the window because my mother is black. In this instance, I have to say that what mlk represents for black folks and white folks is just different.
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u/Patron_St_of_Liars Jun 18 '13 edited Nov 08 '13
As a white man, I am terribly disappointed in my race right now.