Every year, MLK Day brings a lot of shallow proclamations of admiration for a man whose actual vision and political project are often sanitized and sterilized to such extent that even Republicans whose mission it is to undo any of the racial progress since the 1960s will happily (and shamelessly) “celebrate” the legacy of Martin Luther King. But the racial reckoning King envisioned has never happened. It seemed possible, perhaps, in the summer of 2020, during the mass protests after the public murder of George Floyd. But it never materialized. We dive deep into the reasons behind the unprecedented mobilization of 2020 – and examine the factors that explain why there has been so little structural change since: the reactionary counter-mobilization on the Right, the widespread longing among white liberals and centrists for a return to pre-Trump “normalcy,” the rise of “popularist” arguments within the Democratic Party that have discouraged any serious focus on race and racism. We also discuss how racial attitudes in the U.S. have changed recently, and why that, ultimately, might be reason for a tiny bit of optimism – Also: Our take on the latest “scandal” involving classified documents, and what the news media coverage reveals about the fallacies of “both sides” journalism that mistakes “neutrality” for objectivity and values “balance” over accuracy.

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This episode was produced by Connor Lynch