King’s point

Re “Troubled dream,” Opinion, May 18

Those who insist that only an African American should sculpt the bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. forget what the great civil rights leader said about the importance of being judged by “the content of (one’s) character.”

I’m a white American, born 12 years after a sniper’s bullet cut down King in Memphis, but I suspect that if King heard the suggestion that a Chinese artist was incapable of portraying an African American, he’d roll over in his grave.

Then there are the revisionists who want to make King -- a man who vigorously confronted Jim Crow segregation and the Vietnam War -- less confrontational. I think King would find that a bit ironic.

Caitrin McKiernan

Santa Barbara