Monday night’s PBS airing of Amanpour & Co., featured guest host Paula Newton of CNN talking to Harvard professor Imani Perry about the disturbing coincidence of Martin Luther King Jr. Day coinciding with the inauguration of Donald Trump.
Paula Newton: Today's overlap is prompting reflection on the lessons that can still be learned from Dr. King's philosophy. Imani Perry is professor of African and African-American studies at Harvard University….
Imani Perry: ….it is this reminder as we are seeing the legacy of Dr. King attacked on so many fronts, and the vision for a just society attacked on so many fronts, that these are not new forces. That in many ways, this is a particularly pernicious example of it, but those who think as President Trump thinks have been around since the beginning of the nation, and the nation is achieved in its doing. If we want a society that looks closer to the vision that Dr. King held, the vision of justice, of egalitarianism, of generosity, a vision of a society that is not divided so much by the haves and the have-nots but actually is deeply democratic, then we have to do something about it. So this is not like simply a commemorative moment, but it is actually I think a moment when we have to be reminded of what he charged us with doing.
Host Newton spoke glowingly to Perry, who was treated less as interviewee than liberal ally, while pretending that the conservative moves toward dismantling divisive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (D.E.I.) in college and corporate America was a fake issue and that racial preferences in colleges are good.
Newton: It’s a stark juxtaposition as to the last time MLK Day intersected with the Inauguration. The last time Barack Obama in 2013, right, the second term, and he used MLK’s Bible to swear that Martin Luther king used I don’t have to remind you of course, as he traveled America fighting for the freedom. Today, in Trump's inaugural address he marked MLK Day by promising and I’m quoting him now, ‘to make his dream come true.’ He said national unity is now returning to America. This party is really at the center of significant backlash towards the struggles for diversity and inclusion in America, this D.E.I. term, it’s been weaponized, right? And has become kind of a symbol of what is toxic in our culture wars. We’ve seen it used unfortunately even during, again, in those L.A. wildfires. We’ve seen the Supreme Cout strike down affirmative action in colleges, we’ve seen some real implications from that already. Can you reflect on the backlash in this moment right now?
Perry: The backlash in so many ways is an effort to relitigate the '60s and '70s, to undo the social transformations of that time period, to undo the civil rights movements, the women's movements, the LGBTQIA movement, and the poor people's movement that was at the very tail end of Dr. King's journey on this earth. And so there has been an extended backlash, and it has an intensity and fervor now that is perhaps unprecedented….it is with absolute certainty we can say that those forces in position of power right now wish to do damage to Dr. King and the freedom movement --
Newton: You see him as a threat? You clearly see this as a threat?
Not even her left-wing guest would go that far.
Perry: I don't even know that the word is a threat as much as it is insincere in the utmost….
Speaking of a “threat” to a “freedom movement,” Newton embarrassed herself with her hostile coverage in February 2022 of Canada’s peaceful Freedom Convoy protest against that country’s authoritarian COVID restrictions, suggesting they were a threat to Canada.
