"Kareem Abdul Jabar: Why I Have Mixed Feelings About MLK Day"

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar may not be at the forefront of your mind on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but he's got some important insights into the King Legacy, US racism in the 21st century, and the work that people of good conscience need to do.

For some, the fact that we have Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a confirmation that the war has been won, that racism has been eliminated. That we have overcome. But we have to look at the civil rights movement like antibiotics: Just because some of the symptoms of racism are clearing up, you don’t stop taking the medicine or the malady returns even stronger than before. Recent events make clear that the disease of racism is still infecting our culture and that Martin Luther King Jr. Day needs to be a rallying cry to continue fighting the disease rather than just a pat on the back for what’s been accomplished. 

History has a tendency to commemorate the very thing it wishes to obfuscate. When you convince people that they’ve won, they lose some of their fire over injustice, their passion to challenge the status quo. 

You can read the whole thing here