>Do this the Dr. King way, not the Malcom X way. You won't win hearts and minds if you're bearing your teeth all the time.
You don't understand MLK if you think he was less radical than Malcom X[0]. He absolutely did not engage with and humanize his oppressors. He didn't patiently and calmly listen to what racists had to say and try to find common ground and a way to tolerate them. Read his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail[1]" His tolerance for white America was limited to those who were willing to do the work of fighting white supremacy. He had no love at all for the centrists of his day who preached what you're preaching here, or the "colorblind" politics that people have twisted out of his "I have a dream" speech.
You come off like the guy who'd be in 1930s Germany telling the Jews they shouldn't be so intolerant, that maybe the Nazis have some fair points to make and everyone should just hear them out, share a beer and a laugh, and surely everything will be fine if only they realized Nazis were people too. And then point out your wife is Jewish, like somehow that gets you a pass.
Your views are dangerously, almost maliciously naive.
At this point I have come to the conclusion that you can find a King quote to support whatever argument you're trying to make. I'm not so ignorant as to subscribe to the rose tainted Martin vs Malcolm dichotomy. I understand they were contemporaries. I've read LfaBJ. Which is why I think it's a steaming pile to try and argue "Martin was just as radical as Malcolm".
Martin was a human being. He was frustrated with the speed of progress. He did not preach violence. And he rightfully criticized people who wouldn't lift a finger in support of his peoples' rights to share in the same liberty under the law as everyone else. That's justice.
There is a huge difference between allowing immoral/evil unjust racist oppression to exist because you're unwilling to stand up and say "that's wrong", and demonizing your fellow countryman because our scientific understanding of when a human life begins is ever-evolving, or because of differing views on whether tax money should be used to subsidize elective cosmetic surgery. (I'm not arguing one way or another, I'm just stating these examples rhetorically since they're what started this discussion.)
Point being, there's intolerable immoral oppression, and there's acceptable functional political "oppression" (speed limits are oppressive, for instance, but we agree they're generally a useful oppression, so we tolerate the oppression). Racism is the first category. The first world problems of today (save abortion, that one's fuzzy and complicated) fall squarely into the second. And regardless of which category of oppression you're facing, there's still wisdom in understanding that sharpening your edge will only cause the other side to follow and is rarely the way to change minds.
It's also worth noting there also definitely was a group in Nazi Germany who were colloquially called Jews For Hitler[1]. You can guess how it turned out, but they absolutely echoed similar sentiments. They were as wrong as you might expect.
You don't understand MLK if you think he was less radical than Malcom X[0]. He absolutely did not engage with and humanize his oppressors. He didn't patiently and calmly listen to what racists had to say and try to find common ground and a way to tolerate them. Read his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail[1]" His tolerance for white America was limited to those who were willing to do the work of fighting white supremacy. He had no love at all for the centrists of his day who preached what you're preaching here, or the "colorblind" politics that people have twisted out of his "I have a dream" speech.
You come off like the guy who'd be in 1930s Germany telling the Jews they shouldn't be so intolerant, that maybe the Nazis have some fair points to make and everyone should just hear them out, share a beer and a laugh, and surely everything will be fine if only they realized Nazis were people too. And then point out your wife is Jewish, like somehow that gets you a pass.
Your views are dangerously, almost maliciously naive.
[0]https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/1/18/martin-luther-k...
[1]https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....