Martin Luther King’s Legacy: Differing Views

Re “He Came Not to Praise King but ... “ Commentary, Jan. 19: Timothy McDonald would have us believe that only African American Democrats are capable of having genuine feelings of gratitude for the dream and the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. He would like to exclude white, Republican presidents from the exclusive club of King aficionados. President Bush’s recent visit to the tomb of King was greeted with the very type of racial discrimination that King fought so hard to extirpate.

Bush paid public tribute to a man who passionately lived his life to save African Americans from cruelty and injustice. What did he get in return? A slap in the face from those who would brazenly deny him the right to share in the celebration of King’s glorious legacy. Who owns King’s dream of racial equality and emancipation from oppression? Nobody. Yet we are all free to share in it and to treasure it.

Bruce L. Thiessen

Bakersfield

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I understand why protesters booed Bush when, uninvited, he laid a wreath at King’s tombstone in Atlanta. King understood that a spirit of militarism, materialism and racism impeded mankind’s maturity and spiritual growth.

Mike Nally

Garden Grove

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How ironic that your editorial about the maladies afflicting the King/Drew Medical Center would appear on the same day as McDonald’s invocation of King to assault the Bush administration for, among other things, questioning color-coded “affirmative action” programs. Your editorial describes administrative staffing policies where “whom you knew and what you looked like mattered too much” and concludes that at King/Drew, “where patients were dying in part as a result of an apparent attempt to protect the racial status quo, the price became too high.”

Your editorial also acknowledges the demographic reality that South Los Angeles, once 80% black, has become 55% Latino and 40% black. Self-anointed leaders of black America such as McDonald will lead nowhere except to increased marginalization and irrelevance in the face of emergent minorities who will become assimilated into the political power structures of both parties rather than being taken for granted by one.

William S. Davis

Yorba Linda

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I applaud Bush for the nerve to appoint Mississippi Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a recess appointment, the day after his photo op at the tomb of MLK (Jan. 17). I know Pickering was being compassionate when going out of his way to protect the rights of a cross-burning “prankster,” just the way our Supreme Court was showing racial sensitivity when it appointed Bush president while citing the 14th Amendment. What a great day for the civil rights of white Republicans!

Ed Boswell

Long Beach

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By appointing Judge Pickering to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, President Bush once again shatters his self-proclaimed description of “inclusive, not divisive.”

Flo Ginsburg

Santa Monica